


On Impulse

by LivelyColorfulWorld



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, ambiguous relationship to lovers, chenji are that one “i have a knife!” “no!” vine, rebel pilot! Chenle, strategic officer! Jisung, the fic where no one sleeps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 03:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29021886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LivelyColorfulWorld/pseuds/LivelyColorfulWorld
Summary: Chenle Zhong: a thrill-seeking rebel pilot with a taste for danger. Probably the worst set of qualities in a pilot, but he's too far along for anyone to stop him now. Really, Jisung Park’s the only thing keeping him from losing himself in the vast expanse of the galaxy. Though adding the past into the mix brings about a new mission, a couple of bad decisions, and a stolen ship.But it's definitely not Chenle's fault.(It definitely is.)
Relationships: Park Jisung/Zhong Chen Le
Comments: 14
Kudos: 98
Collections: Love Dream 2020





	On Impulse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [idyleski](https://archiveofourown.org/users/idyleski/gifts).



> hello!!!  
> star wars fic. never thought i would be here but !! i spent an embarrassing amount of time on wookiepedia for this like my internet history is absolutely terrible  
> alice: thank you for the lovely prompt!! i rlly ran w it but i hope you like what it’s ended up as:)
> 
> this takes place during the galactic civil war for reference  
> also small rundown of some vocab that shows up (not essential, but maybe helpful):  
> \- eyeballs = TIE Fighters  
> \- Inner/Mid/Outer Rims = the galaxy is separated into these regions! you have to use hyperspeed to travel between them  
> \- Core Worlds = small group of wealthy planets, occupied by the Empire  
> \- ion drive = the engine of a starfighter  
> please be gentle with the details of a few things because i am no star wars expert! i did my best:]
> 
> huge huge thank you to the mods for being so understanding and helpful throughout this process seriously you guys are the best  
> without further ado, i hope you enjoy this fic<33

“You shouldn't be here."

Chenle rolls his eyes at the familiar nagging voice. "Okay? And when has that ever stopped me?"

He then turns back to the base command center in front of him, digging through the bottom drawers until he finds what he’s looking for. As he pulls away to stand, the lights flicker on, revealing the unimpressed face of none other than Jisung Park.

Jisung levels Chenle with a glare as he approaches the other side of the command center. “You nearly got your flying privileges revoked last time. You’d think at least _that_ would’ve stopped you by now."

"Yeah, but I didn't, thanks to you,” Chenle says smoothly.

Jisung's glower deepens.

“Come on, Park, lighten up. I’m not about to steal one of your precious ships.”

“That is _precisely_ what you’re about to do,” Jisung bites back, jabbing an accusing finger at the hangar keycard in Chenle’s left hand. Chenle guilelessly stuffs it into the pocket of his bomber jacket before strolling away to the back of the command room.

“General Huang is sick of your nighttime joyrides, Zhong,” Jisung says, the words clipped.

“Then don’t tell him.” Chenle whirls around and extends his hands to the side, as if presenting Jisung with the answers to the galaxy’s greatest mysteries. Why Jisung Park still bothers to try and stop Chenle is certainly one of those mysteries. “Easy solution.”

“He’s going to find out anyways. And then he’ll be coming to _me_ about it because he thinks I’m the only person you actually listen to—god knows how wrong that is. What am I supposed to say?”

“Just tell _General Huang_ to shove it up his ass.”

“Chenle!” Jisung scolds, and Chenle snorts. Once he reaches the end of the room, he leans against the doorframe, where it leads to the outside. It's pitch-dark, and Chenle rummages through his pockets until he procures a glowrod. Jisung's only a few feet behind him, arms crossed as he takes long strides towards Chenle.

“Junnie’s being a pain for nothing.” Chenle presses a button on the hilt of the glowrod and it flashes to life, the bright yellow light illuminating the pathway ahead of him. “You know, I wouldn’t have to sneak out if you guys stopped locking up my ship and left it outside with the rest of the starfighters," he continues, scanning the area to ensure it's safe to leave. A few weeks prior, there was a scare with straggling clone troopers wandering through the surrounding forest, perhaps from accidentally crashing onto the planet, and Renjun had warned everyone to proceed between hangars and the main base with extreme caution for the next month.

“We’re making repairs, you idiot.”

Chenle turns towards Jisung and grins. “And that’s why I’m taking _your_ ships.”

“Then give me back the keycard and take one of the ships outside.” Jisung narrows his eyes at Chenle. “Or even better, just go back to the bunkers and not get both of us in trouble.”

“You said you wanted the keycard?” Chenle easily holds it out, dangling the synthplate card between his fingers. Just as Jisung reaches out to take it, he snatches it back with a bright cackle. He spins around and languidly begins his trek towards the hangar, reveling in the frustrated groan Jisung lets out.

“I want the ships, but first I need to make sure you guys aren’t screwing my ship up, don’t I? Gotta check up on it. You can have it back later,” Chenle tosses over his shoulder. He ducks under a stray tree branch and steps over a protruding root, scowling sourly down at it. The thick vegetation of Arbra is useful to conceal the rebel base from any passing Imperial ships, but Chenle’s not above admitting navigating around the obstructing trees is an annoying amount of trouble.

Jisung suddenly yelps out a string of curses, and Chenle rolls his eyes, knowing that Jisung likely tripped over the root he avoided earlier. He halts in his step for Jisung to catch up anyways, because while he wouldn’t mind getting Jisung off his back, Renjun would have his head for injuring one of the brightest Strategic Commanders in the Resistance, even if it wasn’t _technically_ his fault. A few moments later, Jisung pops up next to him, looking rather bristled. He plucks a leaf out of his hair and throws it at Chenle, who bats it away with a flick of his hand.

“Do you get a thrill off of going against rules? Is that what it is?” Jisung asks bitterly as they resume walking along the path.

“Mm, a little bit.”

Once the hangar looms into view, Chenle presses the access card against the blinking keypad to the side and ducks under the rising door. Jisung stares at him in exasperation before slumping his shoulders and trailing after him.

"You really don't need to be here," Chenle points out, searching the room until his gaze finally settles on his A-Wing tucked in the back corner. There’s a ladder propped against the adjacent wall, a few tools lying scattered around it; they had probably stopped repairs only a few hours prior. He pockets his glowrod and changes directions from his A-Wing to the ladder, Jisung’s dejected footsteps echoing his own.

"Actually, I do,” Jisung says. “You're going to crash a ship or something."

Chenle stops walking at that to turn around and fix Jisung with an incredulous stare. "I'm literally one of the best pilots in the entire Resistance."

Jisung frowns. "Yeah, but you're also terrible at—”

“I’ve never actually _crashed_ a ship,” Chenle cuts him off. It isn’t like he hasn’t heard this spiel before. “Loosen up a bit, will you?”

“Whatever. Don’t actually try to fly the ship, though.”

“Fine by me.”

After maneuvering the ladder to the side of his A-Wing, Chenle opens the top and climbs into the cockpit. Everything’s been polished and Chenle grins at his reflection in the sleek transparisteel windows. He can make out Jisung’s figure from the ground, who’s too preoccupied with studying the hull of the ship to notice Chenle’s gaze. He’s worrying his lower lip between his teeth as he runs a hand along the underside of the forward mandibles. Chenle’s not even sure what he’s checking for because Jisung has never willingly touched a starfighter in his life—he only ever comes into the hangar to collect organizational information or to chase after Chenle at some obscene hour of the night.

Chenle snorts and turns to the flight controls. He flips through the dials and switches lining the dashboard, giddiness bubbling in his stomach as he watches the needles twitch on the gauges.

“You guys are taking so _long,_ ” he calls out, watching through his peripheral with a sort of sardonic satisfaction as Jisung’s head snaps up, nearly colliding with the titanium alloy frame of the ship. “Everything was pretty minor,” he continues. “Barely even a scuffle with the eyeball. I took the ship down in less than three minutes.”

“He landed a few shots on you in those three minutes,” Jisung says. Footsteps ring through the hangar, followed by a metallic clank. “Anyways, it says here you were due for a maintenance inspection. Better sooner than later.”

Chenle pokes his head outside of the ship, quickly finding Jisung’s figure by one of the workbenches, hunched over a tablet in his hands. "Did Jeno work on this?"

Jisung marks something down on the tablet before scowling up at Chenle. "How am I supposed to know?"

Chenle glances over his shoulder and checks the canopy. The frame gleams a dusty silver: platinum. He grins. "Yeah, he did."

Jeno always takes care to add his own touch to things; a couple of years ago, he had admitted his fondness for reinforcing starfighters with platinum, and Chenle certainly can’t say he minds. After all, the steering handles Jeno had fixed with platinum a few months prior are still in pristine condition.

“Is everything almost done?” Chenle presses, wrapping a hand one of the handles. He jerks it to the side, and a rush of euphoria courses through him. _God_ , how he misses flying his A-Wing. He’s been flying it for four years now, and not once has it let him down.

“I mean, according to the report here, it’ll be another few days.

Chenle frowns. He meets Jisung’s eyes. “But—”

Jisung levels him with an unimpressed look as he sets the tablet back onto the workbench. “You literally haven’t had the ship for _two_ days.”

“Whatever.”

With one final sweep of the cockpit, Chenle climbs down the ladder. He takes a moment to admire the blaster bolt cannons on the side of the ship before wandering over to Jisung.

“Are the repairs up to your standards, Commander Zhong?” Jisung asks flatly.

Chenle runs a hand through his hair and gives Jisung a sleazy wink. “They are, thank you.”

Jisung makes a face. “Can we leave now?”

Chenle’s gaze flickers towards the spare helmets lined along the back wall of the hangar. Jisung clearly notices, based on the way his shoulders slump and he groans.

“You don’t have to go flying right now. You could just leave and we could go back to the bunkers and sleep and—”

Chenle tunes Jisung out as he jogs over and searches through the helmets until he finds his size. He tucks it under his arm and returns back to where Jisung’s standing, still rambling about reasons why Chenle should absolutely not go flying right now. If it wasn’t so entertaining, Chenle would’ve lost his mind by now.

Jisung finally trails off. “You’re not listening to me again.”

“Oh, no, please go on,” Chenle prompts him. He takes the helmet into his hands and breathes on a part of the visor, rubbing it clean with a corner of his jacket sleeve. “I’m completely listening. And fascinated, honestly; I have no idea how you manage to come up with _more_ reasons every single time we have this conversation. So yes, you were saying?”

“You don’t even need the practice. So there’s no reason for you to go out right now.”

Chenle’s eyebrows shoot up at that. Flattery is definitely a new tactic. “Oh, I know I don’t need the practice. But if I stay cooped up for another hour here, the Empire isn’t the only thing you guys will have to worry about.”

“What does that even mean?” Jisung asks, bewildered.

Chenle gives Jisung a two-fingered salute before strolling towards the exit of the hangar.

“ _Chenle_!” Jisung yells after him, “What does that _mean_?”

—

Chenle buckles himself into the first ship he finds outside: a beaten-down Y-Wing, the hull tarnished and frayed threads sticking out of the pilot chair Chenle’s seated in. A Y-Wing isn't his ideal type of starfighter, but it’s sturdy enough to last plenty of laps, maybe even a few tricks to piss Jisung off. He’s about to start the engine when Jisung comes stalking out of the hangar.

In the faint light of the cockpit, Chenle notices Jisung sidestep the root he had tripped over earlier but get tangled in the nearby bushes, stumbling in an attempt to catch himself.

“Are you alive?” Chenle calls out, and receives an indignant huff in reply. “You know, it would be easier to head back now.”

“No, I’m fine.” Jisung finally shakes off a branch and marches up to the nose of the ship. Chenle eyes him wryly.

“Park, if you wanted to join so badly, you really could’ve said so.” Chenle jabs a finger at the nearby ladder, then holds out a hand for Jisung to take. “There’s enough room for two. The gunner seat is wide open for you."

Jisung plops onto the ground, glaring up at Chenle. “You’re insufferable.”

Chenle shrugs and starts the ship's ignition. "Suit yourself!" he shouts over the purr of the engine. He closes the cockpit, and with a yank of the steering handles, the ship careens up into Arbra's atmosphere.

A Y-Wing doesn't have the same agility as his usual A-Wing, but Chenle decides to push the acceleration to the limit anyways, to see how far it can go. It's clunky, which makes maneuvering more difficult, but he sharply twists the steering handles to whizz above trees, the bottom of the hull barely missing the canopy.

Chenle grins as the ship climbs in altitude, reaching the peak of where Arbra's atmosphere meets the rest of space. He waits there for a moment, taking in the sight below him: it looks like any normal forest planet, but he knows that by the particularly dense clump of trees to the right, there's the hangar he was in earlier. Jisung's somewhere down there, too.

He sneaks a glance through the side-windows of the cockpit, towards the starfield that stretches for millions of miles. The opportunity will come tomorrow, during his assigned mission; Renjun’s been scheduling missions nearly every week for Chenle, but Chenle supposes he’s not in the position to complain about it, since they all allow him to leave the confines of Arbra’s atmosphere. Still, he’s aching to fly further into the galaxy, discover what lies beyond the same routes he's always stuck following.

After all, there's a certain beauty to flying through space on your own volition; it's what had convinced him to be a pilot in the first place. While you're in a starfighter, you can call the small portion of space you occupy your own.

He swallows, turning straight ahead again. Perhaps one day, when safety and peace isn’t a rarity in the galaxy, that unbridled freedom will be within reach. Until then, he’ll have to make do.

With a forward thrust of the steering handles, he plummets straight down towards the trees. The stars speed past him as he gets closer and closer to the canopy, and a whoop of joy escapes him. Just as he's about to crash into the trees, he pulls up, flying parallel. The ion engine sputters in protest, but other than that, it seems to be holding up relatively well. A quick survey of the ground helps him find Jisung's figure in the darkness.

He swoops down to hover right next to Jisung, partly opening the cockpit in the process. Jisung practically jumps out of his skin with a yelp, clutching at his heart.

"Stop showing off, asshole, you're going to wake up everyone within a 100-mile radius!" Jisung shouts, and Chenle grin widens.

"I don't know, you seem interested in watching me," Chenle notes.

"I'm making sure you don't destroy the ship."

"And _how_ would you tell me to stop destroying the ship all the way from down here?" It’s a question that he knows Jisung won’t have an excuse for, but it’s amusing to see Jisung try to scramble out of the hole he’s dug himself into.

“I—well—” Jisung falls silent; he averts his gaze before crossing his arms over his chest. "I think you've flown enough for one night," he says instead.

Chenle laughs. "Give me a few minutes."

He shuts the cockpit and gives Jisung a little wave, who scrunches his nose in response.

Chenle turns the ship and accelerates straight into the forest, swerving around the thick trunks. He's pushing the Y-Wing to its limits, but it's worth the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He focuses on executing tighter turns, and branches brush against the windows of the cockpit, just enough to see a blur of foliage but not enough for it to scratch.

After reaching the end of the forest and looping back around, Chenle smoothly lands in the same spot he had found the ship. He opens the cockpit, propping a hand up on the side to watch Jisung stomp towards the ship. He clambers up the ladder and Chenle takes off his helmet to humor whatever reprimand Jisung's about to throw at him.

They stare at each other for a minute, and Chenle arches a brow. "Yes?"

“No more.” Jisung wrestles Chenle’s helmet away from him and sets it onto the top of the ladder. “It’s late.”

“I’m not some two year old that needs you to tell me what to do,” Chenle snaps with a scowl. He unbuckles himself from the harness to reach for the helmet, but Jisung slaps his hand away.

"Well, you need to sleep," Jisung chides. "You're going off to Umbara tomorrow for a doonium run, and you know Umbara is _swarming_ with clone troopers."

“You know my whole mission schedule.”

It’s a simple statement, but the tips of Jisung’s ears turn red.

“Whatever. Not my problem if you fall asleep in the cockpit."

Chenle hums. "Sounds like you care, though."

"Should I not?" Jisung asks, narrowing his eyes.

Chenle shrugs. "Up to you, I guess." He slowly climbs out of the cockpit and sits on the hull of the ship, his legs dangling over the side. He swings them, and asks with a tilt of his head, "So do you not want to? To care, I mean."

Jisung sighs in defeat. "No comment. Just—sleep soon, yeah?”

Chenle softens at that. “I will, promise.”

"Good." Jisung stifles a yawn with the back of his hand. "If you need anything, I'll be in the main base."

As he descends the ladder, Chenle fishes his glowrod out of his pocket.

"Park!" he calls. Jisung spins around, and Chenle tosses his glowrod at Jisung, who fumbles to catch it and flick it on. "You're more blind than me. Also, do you think you guys can finish fixing my ship before I leave for Umbara?"

Jisung smiles, and it's even brighter in the shining light of Chenle's glowrod. "I can try to work something out."

Chenle watches Jisung leave and doesn't bother fighting down a smile of his own.

—

Stepping in front of the small mirror of the refresher, Chenle combs his hair into place, even though he knows his helmet will mess it up anyways. He studies his reflection for a moment before glancing down at his hands, clenching and unclenching them to admire the fingerless gloves he had donned an hour earlier. The stiff fabric digs into his skin, pleasantly so, and Chenle can't help but wonder who had left it on his pillow that morning.

With one final nod to the mirror, he steps out of the refresher, the door sliding closed after him. The bustle of passing pilots in the corridor fills the air, and Chenle shoulders his way through the crowd to get to the exit.

As soon as he reaches the command base, Jisung falls into step with Chenle. "We need about five hundred grams of doonium for construction. More than enough credits have been transferred to your chip. And here"—he presses a small sack into Chenle's hands—"are extra credit coins, just in case."

"Good morning to you, too,” Chenle says, jostling the sack for a second to hear the credits clink together before pocketing it. “Stressed?”

“Mildly,” Jisung mutters, looking much more than just mildly stressed. There are deep-set bags under his eyes, and he’s fidgety as if he’s already drunk his first cup of caf for the day.

“Guess I’m not the only one with a fucked-up sleeping schedule,” Chenle remarks dryly, and Jisung huffs, turning away. He stomps off to the corner of the room where the coordinate maps are on display, a poor attempt at making Chenle drop the topic or leave him alone. Chenle follows behind him, not missing the petulant sigh that escapes Jisung’s lips as he realizes Chenle’s not going anywhere. After all, Jisung’s supposed to be giving Chenle instructions for his mission, so it’s not like Chenle _can_ leave him alone.

"You know, the plans and strategies or whatever can wait for a few hours. Renjun gives us breaks at night for a reason,” Chenle tells Jisung once they come to a stop in front of the enormous teal screens, detailed diagrams of nearby planets on full display. Jisung taps at the screen a few times then drags his finger across it, and the screen switches to an image of Umbara.

Jisung faces Chenle, likely on the verge of telling Chenle off, when Chenle beats him to it. He pokes a finger into Jisung’s chest. “You’re also being extremely hypocritical.”

Jisung snaps his mouth closed. He frowns. “I mean—”

“If you’re going to be on my ass about sleeping, you have to do it, too. I’m not about to be bossed around by someone who doesn’t even do what he preaches.”

“You don’t even listen to me,” Jisung says. He sounds oddly miffed, which Chenle would argue is unfair because the statement isn’t _always_ true.

“I’m listening to you now, aren’t I?”

Jisung blinks a few times as if considering that. “I—I guess you are.” He holds eye contact for another moment before shifting his attention to the screen in front of him. “Well, Commander Zhong—”

“Is there a reason you only call me Commander Zhong?” Chenle asks. “Is this you trying to be professional? Or do you just like the way it sounds?”

Jisung shoots him an incredulous look. “Can you not interrupt me while I’m in the middle of giving you orders?”

Chenle holds up his hands in mock-defeat. “Please continue, _Commander_ Park.”

Jisung tilts his head backwards and slowly exhales through his nose. “I swear, one day I—” he makes a vague gripping motion with his hands before clenching them into fists. Chenle snorts and Jisung fixes him with a withering glare. Chenle returns it with a raised brow and a smirk that he knows would spur Jisung on during any regular day. But Jisung’s also one of the top commanders on Haven Base for a reason, so whether or not this riles Jisung up is fair game.

“I’m waiting,” Chenle says, and Jisung gives in with a muttered “Whatever.”

Jisung taps the diagram of Umbara he had pulled up earlier on the screen to zoom in. Chenle peers at the dark swirling clouds coating the atmosphere; they won’t be hard to navigate through, but dangerous enough that Chenle figures it’s one of the reasons Jisung’s been so fidgety about this mission.

“Alright, we downloaded your ideal entry coordinates onto a data disk that I’ll give you in a second. Once you make it into the atmosphere, make sure you land in the outskirts of the Blastfield Shipyards. It’ll be a bit of a walk to the main hub, but you need to air on the side of caution. You should find our supplier somewhere in the Gilded Descent.”

"A casino? Seriously?"

The last time someone got directed to a casino for trading, it was Donghyuck, who had returned half-drunk. How he had managed to fly through enemy territory after downing at _least_ two glasses of Sullust Liquor was beyond Chenle. To his credit, he had gotten the aurodium they needed, but it had been enough of a headache that Renjun vowed to stop using casinos for rendezvous points.

“It’s what the supplier wants. We aren’t really in a position to make demands.”

“So this guy is one of those ‘neutral’ people,” Chenle says, and the derision in his voice makes Jisung crack a small smile.

“Exactly. It’s dangerous because he could sell us out, so we just need to comply and be extra cautious.” He eyes Chenle warily. “Not sure why they’re sending _you_ for that job, though.”

“I’m careful!” Chenle protests. “When have I ever not been?”

Jisung wordlessly jabs a finger towards the outside of the base, and Chenle follows it to see the starfighters lined up, ready for the day’s missions. There’s the unmistakable glint of red, and Chenle’s heart leaps in his chest.

“You guys fixed it!” he gushes, taking in his A-Wing in all its glory. It practically shimmers in the sunlight, thanks to what seems to be a fresh coat of paint. He’s about to sprint outside when he hears a poorly stifled laugh coming from Jisung.

“I mean—” Chenle clears his throat. “Okay, that wasn’t even my fault. I—”

“ _Speaking of_ ,” Jisung says firmly, as if he doesn’t have the energy to engage Chenle in another petty argument, “they want to recheck the landing gear and ion drive, so make sure to return the ship to the hangar so they can finish everything up. But it should be okay for now, I made sure of that.”

“Sounds good.” Chenle tries to catch sight of his ship again, but Jisung steps into view. He holds out a small disk.

When Chenle doesn’t make a move to take it, Jisung nudges it towards him again. “Your coordinates. At least take it as a precaution.”

Chenle grabs it from him and stuffs it into his pocket. “Am I good to go, then?”

Jisung nods. “You know the drill.”

“See you soon, Park.”

“See you. And _be care_ —”

“Be careful, I know. I will, promise.” Chenle flashes him a smile. “Just for you.”

—

The casino is drenched in gold, from the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling to the glittering credits stacked on the betting tables. Imperial Elites surround the tables, laughing and taunting those around them as they roll die and deal cards. Their bedazzled clothes and jewelry gleam under the artificial lights.

Chenle brushes past them, skin prickling in distaste as he attempts to keep his face neutral.

He lingers by a table, watching as the card dealer gives a man the second card on the pile instead of the first; the same man smirks triumphantly a minute later as he lays down his cards, dragging the huge pile of credits towards himself. He nods at the dealer, and Chenle huffs to himself; they’re not even being discreet, but everyone’s too caught up in their own losses to notice.

Before he leaves, he swipes a thin golden necklace from around a nearby lady’s neck, for later. Not like anyone would miss it anyways. Pocketing it, he turns to continue his trek towards the small bar in the back of the main hall, weaving in and out of small crowds with a thin-lipped smile. Once he reaches the end, he marches up to the bar and scans the displayed drink list until he finds one that looks vaguely familiar. He points it out to the bartender and places four coins down as payment before leaning against the bar.

There’s a clear view of the casino here, and Chenle surveys the main hall for anyone that could be the doonium merchant. Everyone in the hall blends together, though, and Chenle deduces that whoever he’s looking for is probably not in the heart of the casino. The grating sound of glass against wood brings Chenle out of his thoughts, and he quietly thanks the bartender as he swirls the purple liquid in his glass, the brightly-colored bubbles sitting on the surface fizzing and popping with the movement.

A few seats away, a man is seated in a bar chair. An eyepatch covers one of his eyes, and there’s a cape draped over his left arm. Chenle doesn’t allow himself to stare, already having an inkling that this is the man he’s looking for. He can feel the man’s gaze follow him as he strolls through the bar area, nodding politely at a few people while taking small sips of his drink. When he reaches the bar again, glass half-empty and feeling pleasantly buzzed, he sidles up to the man.

"Would you care for some whiskey? On me."

The man raises his brows. “I’m quite alright, thank you.” He shifts, and a chip transaction pad peeks out of his trouser pocket. Bingo.

Chenle leans forward. "Huang," Chenle mutters in the man's ear, and he nods.

"Follow me."

The man leads him between the card tables and rowdy crowds. His posture is straight and an easy smile graces his lips as he directs Chenle through the door of a backroom. Chenle keeps a steady hand on the pistol in his holster anyways.

Chenle ducks into the room, the man stepping in after him. He leaves the door open, though, clearly having no intention of closing it. The noise filters through the entryway, leaving both of them painfully exposed. Not how Chenle prefers his usual trades to go, but Jisung had said not to make any demands, so he presses his lips together to force himself to stay quiet.

"Credits first, please," the man simpers.

Chenle raises his brows. He's well-acquainted with this type of merchant: they’re crafty, and if you accuse them of anything, there’ll be stormtroopers chasing after you in a heartbeat.

"I need proof that you're keeping your side of the bargain," Chenle says, keeping his tone even.

The man nods approvingly. He grabs a sack from behind the door—Chenle hadn’t even noticed it was there before—and throws it down between them, then kicks the side of it with the toe of his polished boot. It reveals the grey glint of doonium. Chenle reaches down to touch a piece of the doonium, rubbing a thumb over the jagged metal.

"Would you like to lick it just to make sure as well?” the man asks from above him, and Chenle stands, brushing himself off.

"I'm quite alright, Mister—I'm sorry, I don't think I got your name." A name is the one of the best ways to find someone; if this ends up being a scam, Chenle can make sure the man doesn’t escape with his stolen credits. It’s happened before, but it wasn’t hard to track down someone with the name of Yangyang Liu.

"I never gave it." The man smirks. "I think we're both too busy for introductions, so perhaps another time.” He hands over the small chip transaction pad Chenle had seen earlier, not leaving any room for further discussion.

Chenle fishes out his chip card and inserts it into the slot, watching with a mixture of satisfaction and dismay as nearly 60,000 credits are transferred from his card to the man’s.

Once it goes through, the man takes the transaction pad back, glancing at the screen with a smile before gesturing down at the sack of doonium. “Pleasure doing business with you.” He pockets the transaction pad, only to retrieve something else: a rectangular device, with a large button in the middle of it.

“I’ll give you a head start. For being so cooperative.”

Chenle’s mouth goes dry. “What—”

The man presses the button, and a red light flashes in the main casino hall behind them. Several people yelp in surprise and scurry away from the betting tables, but everyone else seems fairly collected as the distinct stomp of stormtroopers rings out from the hall.

Chenle catches sight of a stormtrooper, blaster in hand, and groans. He turns to the man with a scowl. “Really?”

“Twenty-thousand credit reward for the capture of any rebel pilot. Better run,” he drawls, clearly amused by the chaos he’s initiated. “Or not. Up to you.”

He turns on his heel and strolls out of the room, whistling. Chenle sticks up a middle finger at his back.

“You’re an ass!” Chenle shouts after the man for good measure. The footsteps approaching the room crescendo and Chenle curses under his breath, scanning the room for any possible ways to escape. There aren’t any windows, which means the only way out is through the casino itself. He unsheathes his pistol, clutching it in one hand and the bag in the other. Just as the first stormtrooper reaches the doorway, he shoots them in the chest and skids past them, sprinting towards the bar.

He flattens his back against a golden pillar, the bartender watching him with wide eyes. Chenle raises his pistol at him and he immediately returns to polishing the glass in his hands.

“Get me another one of those drinks,” he calls out to the bartender before peeking around the column to check where the stormtroopers are. They’re currently circling around the main area, likely believing Chenle’s hiding among the crowds of people or under a piece of furniture. He grins to himself, holstering his pistol and ambling over to the bar to retrieve his drink. He takes a gulp of it, surveying the casino hall again. At this rate, he could probably just walk out before anyone notices.

So he decides to do just that.

He manages to reach the end of the hall when a blaster bolt whistles past him, shattering the glass in his hands. Chenle drops the remaining shards on the ground, staring mournfully at his spilled drink. Another blaster bolt collides with an overhanging chandelier, sending it crashing down onto a betting table. And that’s Chenle’s cue to get the _fuck_ out of here.

Kicking the front door down (really for theatrics more than anything else) Chenle bursts outside and makes a mad dash through the central Umbaran hub, the yells of pursuing stormtroopers following him down the streets. He lobs the occasional shot behind him and hopes he doesn’t accidentally hit a civilian instead of a stormtrooper.

His A-Wing is parked on the outskirts of the Blastfield Shipyards, right below a particularly strange-looking rock formation. It won’t be hard to find it once he reaches the shipyards, but until then, he’s left relying on his fuzzy memory and instincts. He readjusts the doonium sack over his shoulder, praying it won’t tear.

When the bright lights of the central hub fade out to a gloomy twilight, Chenle beams, setting down the sack and sagging against a crumbling wall. He lost the stormtroopers about ten minutes prior, but there are plenty of patrols crawling in the shipyards. Pressing his hands against the wall, Chenle readies himself to push off and run into shipyards, when he suddenly realizes the stickiness of his gloves. He pauses, studying them for a moment; the laundry droids can probably clean it back at base, but ruining them the very same day he received them strikes a chord of irritation inside of him. There’s no use worrying about it now, though. Not when he still has at least another mile between himself and his ship.

He rolls his neck, grips the sack, and takes off into the shipyards.

It feels like the obstacle courses he’s read about in books when he was younger; the specialized Jedi training facilities that he once ached to experience for himself. But a lot darker. Definitely a lot darker. He’s almost run into half-finished starships at least three times.

He loses track of time between dodging around Imperial starships and stormtroopers, focusing on reaching the end of the Blastfield Shipyards. Every slam of his shoes against the ground kicks up dust, which only adds to the lack of visibility. A flash of red breaks through the darkness, perhaps the stormtroopers' way of tracking each other’s location.

“Rebel pilot, green jacket, scrawny. Carrying a large bag. Contents unknown,” a robotic voice says, sounding much too close for comfort.

And, well, if the stormtroopers didn’t know about Chenle, they do now. Though he will say he takes much offense to the ‘scrawny’ part, because god _knows_ he’s anything but scrawny. He pokes his bicep with the muzzle of his blaster—which is plenty muscular, mind you—and huffs underneath his breath.

Chenle throws one last glare at the general direction the voice had come from before continuing to seek out the shipyard border fence. Luckily, it soon looms into view, and Chenle doesn’t waste a minute to begin scaling it.

“I take all my precautions and shit and I _still_ have stormtroopers chasing after me,” Chenle laments to himself, swinging a leg over the fence. Stormtroopers fill the area, now actively searching for Chenle, and for once he appreciates the thick fog that seems to permanently blanket Umbara. “You all suck, for the record!” he yells out. “Useless piles of spare parts!”

Three stormtrooper heads snap towards him in unison and Chenle squeaks, scrambling over the rest of the fence and sprinting away as blaster bolts whizz by his head. One singes the sack of doonium, and Chenle swings the bag around so he’s clutching it to his chest.

His A-Wing is within reach, no more than a couple hundred feet away. Once he reaches the rock formation, he climbs up the side, standing solidly on the ledge. With a sharp exhale through his lips, he launches himself off and lands on the hull of the ship. He opens the cockpit and slides in, tossing the bag of doonium behind him as he starts the ignition. The stormtroopers are fast-approaching, so he snaps his steering handles forwards and speeds upwards. Hopefully no one links together the fugitive rebel pilot spotted in the casino and the unauthorized atmosphere exit. No one probably will; he’s gotten out of trickier situations with similar ease.

Chenle spares a glance at his navigation system. The run had taken barely a quarter of the estimated time Jisung had told him when he first issued the mission to Chenle a week ago.

He _could_ return back to base now, but why would he pass up an opportunity to fly through the galaxy for a bit longer? He's near the Empress Teta system and has plenty of credits left on his card.

Looking back at the bag of doonium safely stored away in the back of his ship, Chenle grins. He has time.

—

Chenle’s A-Wing surges forward as he makes the hyperspeed jump between the Mid and Outer Rims. He’s giddy off of success and whatever he drank a few hours ago, and smugly notes that the combined worth of everything aboard his ship is more than all the credits he’d seen in the casino.

There’s an incoming transmission from base, and Chenle clicks a button on the communications panel to accept it.

“Hey,” Jisung’s voice rings out through the comms, husky and rough, “you’re on your way back already?”

“Yeah, easy. Doonium safe and secure.” Chenle decides to omit the part about the merchant ending up being a backstabbing asshole and having to flee from at least fifteen stormtroopers. “Took a quick detour on the carbonite run, so we have some extra for droids. Might’ve underpaid one of the guys selling it, but”—he shrugs to himself—“no harm in what he doesn’t know.”

There’s no reaction from Jisung. Chenle frowns. Jisung would usually make some kind of snide comment about going off-track or being irresponsible, but he’s silent. He allows another minute for Jisung to reply, but finally caves when he doesn’t hear much from the receiving end.

“You good?”

Jisung sighs. “Long day.” He mutters something under his breath, and Chenle flips a few dials on his navigation system as he waits for Jisung to continue. It always takes him some time to admit what’s bothering him.

“Couple of ships got taken down in the Mid Rim earlier,” Jisung finally says. “The Empire figured out our tactic after the first few shots. I thought the cloaking devices we snagged from Aeten Two would be enough to mask the attack, but they saw it coming. Identified the magnetic fields or something, according to Dejun.”

The news is sobering, and Chenle fidgets with the steering handles. Tensions have been rising in the past few weeks, if Renjun’s agitated discussions with the other commanders is anything to go by. The Empire knows about the increasing presence of rebels in the galaxy, which only means it’ll be less safe than ever for everyone in Haven base.

“Were there any fatalities?” he asks finally.

Jisung swallows thickly, and Chenle finds himself doing the same. “Yeah, four.”

“Oh.” Chenle doesn’t press further; he knows it’s not a topic to be discussed over the comms. Jisung will elaborate if he wants to. “Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

“I don’t know, Chenle,” Jisung says. His voice wavers, and Chenle has a feeling he’s sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around his legs in an attempt to make himself as small as possible. He would always call it his method of ‘grounding himself,’ and Chenle would then make a terrible pun that never failed to elicit a smile out of Jisung.

“Everything I sketch out, every little ‘x’ and ‘o’… they all correspond to people. People that are fighting for freedom, and I’m trying to help as much as I can, but I can’t help but wonder if we’re playing with people’s lives. I know we’re in a war, and loss is inevitable, but I just—I just don’t know if we’re ready. This might’ve been too much.”

_For me_ , Chenle knows he wants to add. _This might’ve been too much for me._

“You’re ready,” Chenle says calmly. “You can do it. I know it’s tough, but there’s no point in doubting yourself. Renjun didn’t appoint you so early on if he didn’t think you could do it.”

“You’re just saying all of that to make me feel better,” Jisung mumbles. There’s a muffled sniffle, and Chenle frowns.

“I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t think you could.”

“Sure.”

“Did I lie?” Chenle asks. “Did Renjun _not_ appoint you to head strategic director the literal day you turned eighteen?”

Stunned silence. “He—he did, yeah,” Jisung stutters, “but—”

“Exactly. So stop doubting yourself, stupid.”

Jisung laughs wetly, and warmth blooms in Chenle’s chest. Success.

“I’ll be back soon. I’m passing by Akiva right now.”

“See you soon. And thanks. Really.”

Jisung ends the transmission, and Chenle accelerates to maximum speed. The Outer Rim is a wondrous place to travel through, and Chenle would usually weave through the planets at his own leisure to procrastinate returning to Haven Base, but he finds himself sailing directly into Arbra’s atmosphere as soon as he can see the trademark dark green surface through his cockpit windshield.

Jisung’s the only person still in the main base when Chenle arrives. He’s tapping on some diagram on the screen in front of him as he plays with Chenle’s glowrod, absentmindedly flicking it on and off. Chenle coughs, and Jisung jumps, immediately closing the screen and sticking the glowrod back into his pocket.

“You just missed General Huang,” he says as Chenle stores his helmet away to the side. His eyes are puffy, but Chenle graciously decides to not point that out, instead tugging off his sticky gloves to store in his boot.

“It’s fine. He doesn’t want to talk to me much these days, anyways.”

Chenle shakes his head out and combs a hand through his bangs. They’re damp with sweat, and he’s in sore need of a shower, but there’s adrenaline thrumming in his veins and he doesn’t want to sign off for the night just yet.

“Did you park your ship in the hangar?”

“Yeah, I will,” Chenle says with a wave of his hand, “later.”

Jisung purses his lips, skeptical. “You _have_ to.”

“And I _will_. Just not now.”

Chenle rummages through his pockets, spreading out the contents onto the command base center, and Jisung looks like he’s aged ten years as he watches.

“Can’t you do this literally anywhere else?”

“Here’s your coordinate disk and credit bag,” Chenle says, handing the data drive and said bag to Jisung. “Doonium and carbonite sacks are in the front crates. They should be real, but I’m sure Renjun’ll have Yukhei check everything out later.” He plays with some of the miscellaneous junk laid on the table: a toothpick, a loose thread he’d yanked off of his pilot seat, a playing card, before seeing the more notable object in his stash.

“Care for a necklace?” He pinches it between his thumb and forefinger, holding it up for Jisung to see as he raises a brow. “Authentic Imperial gold. Straight from the neck of some snooty asshole.”

“Again?” Jisung eyes the dangling necklace for a second before sighing. “You need to stop stealing from people; one of these days, you’re going to get caught.”

“But have I?”

Jisung glares at him. “Just—put it with the rest of them. We can melt the pile down later and use it for droids.”

“You don’t like my gift? I think it’d look nice on you. Add some color to your outfit.” He gestures at Jisung’s drab attire, a tattered oversized jacket swallowing his frame and cargo pants. Jisung scowls.

“It’ll look nicer as part of the new battle droid Jeno’s planning to build.”

Chenle shrugs in defeat. It’s not worth arguing with Jisung about things like this. “It’s in your hands.” He drapes the chain around Jisung’s wrist. “Literally.”

“Very funny.” Jisung’s tone is dry, but Chenle can tell he’s fighting down a smile. Chenle turns away to clean off the base command center, and Jisung thumbs along the chain when he thinks Chenle isn’t looking.

“Do you—” Chenle tilts his head towards the bunkers. “I know you probably haven’t slept. You should probably stop waiting up for me when I’m coming back so late.”

Jisung hums. “I guess.”

Chenle has a feeling he won’t stop. They’ve been doing this for three years, now. Past the point of return.

Chenle doesn’t really want him to stop, either.

—

Someone’s crying.

The main base is empty, the sun dipping below the horizon. Normally, it would be a beautiful sight, but that day, the sky is painted in contrition, oranges and reds bleeding together. Trees rustle in the breeze, and the birds croon a mournful tune as they fly away to make room for the night.

The disappearing sun allows for a veil of darkness, and the person thinks it hides him well enough, but Chenle can make out his figure.

He thinks his pleas are unheard by all those around him, but Chenle can hear every one like jagged crystals; they’re only unheard by whatever deity is up above, watching over them but never intervening as the boy's heart bleeds in tandem with the red now overtaking the sky.

Chenle’s own heart leaps into his throat, painfully constricting with each breath.

He steps closer. Calls out, almost inaudibly, “ _Renjun_.”

Renjun doesn’t hear him. He tries to muffle his sobs with a shaking hand, but they slip past anyways.

Chenle reaches out for him. “Renjun, I—”

It’s morning.

Chenle blinks, adjusting to the sudden change in surroundings. A crowd gathers around him, but they’re looking at someone else.

The sight is familiar. It’s all too familiar, and Chenle swallows, hands itching to hold onto something—a steering handle, a pistol, maybe even another person, alive and warm, unlike the cold shiver that overtakes him as he realizes what’s about to happen.

Chenle looks towards the front of the crowd, and sees him.

He’s boarding his X-Wing. Chenle doesn’t know that’s the last time he’ll see him. Renjun doesn’t, either.

He finds Chenle’s eyes in the crowd and grins. _I’ll make you and Renjun proud_ he mouths, and Chenle wants to tell him that he always has. That he’s the best pilot the Resistance has ever seen and Chenle’s desperately trying to continue his legacy. Perhaps even become so skilled that they'll become equals, standing on the same platform. Someone to be admired.

But most of all, he wants to tell him not to go.

Chenle Zhong is no coward, but he knows how this ends. He knows it’s not worth it. It won’t be worth it when it’s five days of radio silence, and the days stretch into weeks and weeks into a month and then finally, everyone will realize he’s not coming back at all.

He watches the X-Wing disappear out of sight, and the crowd around him dissipates. Renjun remains, though, staring up at the sky. He's playing with a ring around his finger. Chenle turns to leave him alone, give him a moment of privacy, but as he blinks, the world shifts again.

Chenle sees himself this time. Staring at his own ship, eyes glassed over, numb. He remembers wondering how things would've been different if he had been the one to insist on going. Corellia is dangerous. They all knew that.

Observing himself for a moment, he notices he looks the same, sans a few eyebags and wrinkles. He can see the beginnings of the tension in his shoulders that he's now become so accustomed to. His nailbeds have been bitten raw; a habit he's tried to curb for years, but only exacerbated by the blanket of stress that's settled over the entire base since the M.I.A. announcement.

Chenle looks down at his own nailbeds. They're misshapen, but calluses have formed in lieu of torn hangnails, from the hours of gripping the steering handles of his A-Wing.

Chenle glances away, towards the base, and sees Renjun hunched over the base command center as he stares at the screen. It's been three days since he's been declared missing. Renjun doesn't want to believe it. He's searching for any signs of his X-Wing, of _life_ , and it's tearing him apart; at this point, Chenle knows he hasn't slept for days. The rare smiles he would offer Chenle then were perhaps meant to be comforting, but they were empty enough to send a chill down Chenle’s spine.

There's a slight cough, and Chenle sees that lingering off to the side of the main base is Jisung, half-hidden in the shadows casted by the nearby trees. He's worrying his lower lip between his teeth, never taking his eyes off of where Chenle's past self is sitting, and makes no action to stop Chenle as he snatches a discarded helmet and climbs into the cockpit of his A-Wing.

Jisung instead steps out of the darkness, approaching where Chenle once sat as Chenle's A-Wing careens upward.

He had done it to chase away the bitterness of regret on his tongue, accelerating faster and faster with every invasive thought. And during that time, Jisung never said anything, not a single questioning glance or snide comment.

Jisung waited for him on the ground, always there to ease Chenle’s helmet out of his trembling hands, and Chenle stopped being surprised when he woke up the next morning in his cot, tucked in and Jisung softly snoring on the floor next to him. They never talked about it.

Chenle supposes they never will, but he walks over to Jisung anyways, staring up at Chenle's A-Wing racing through Arbra's atmosphere with an indecipherable expression.

"Jisung," he says quietly, but it comes out almost like a plea. His voice cracks, hoarse, and Jisung looks directly at him. He extends a hand, Chenle reaches out to take it, and—

His breath catches in his throat and he wakes with a start, coughing and sputtering. A few people stir around him at the sudden sound, but otherwise remain still. He sits up, swallows to try and dispel the lump lodged in his throat, but it's like thick cotton that absorbs every feeble attempt. There's a strange stiffness on his cheeks, and he rubs it away with the back of his hand.

It's not the first time Chenle's relived that day, or the weeks following. It all plagues his dreams, rendering him restless for hours on end; fragmented like a crumbling film tape, but striking enough that Chenle can recite every part by memory until he’s yanking each scene together with a fraying string. Almost a crude imitation of reality, but reality's never been much to look at in the first place.

Chenle makes a note to stay up a bit later the upcoming night before climbing out of his cot. The beginnings of dawn seeps through the small window of the room, and he releases a shuddering breath. Slipping out of the door, he pads outside and along the winding path until he reaches the area where most of the ships are kept.

The sunrise is a bright red, similar to the sky he had seen in his dreams. It bleeds in welcome and warning, and for once, Chenle heeds both.

It's not the first time Chenle's reminded of a time he wishes he could forget.

But perhaps it’s the first Chenle will finally do something about it.

—

“Zhong!” a voice yells, and Chenle whirs around to see Jisung sprinting towards him, waving a tablet around in the air. He skids to a stop right in front of Chenle. “What’s the max speed on your A-Wing? Have you installed the cloaking devices yet? How powerful is your ion drive? Can—”

“One question at a time, holy shit,” Chenle cuts him off. “What is this even for?”

“Did you ever bring your ship to get serviced?” Jisung asks in reply.

Nope. “Sure, of course I did.”

Jisung brightens, and Chenle chuckles nervously, which he disguises with a cough. He’ll get around to it, eventually.

“Good, okay. We’re trying to find someone for another mission, and Renjun was saying you would be the best for it. Onderon. But he needs you to find a way to navigate around the Core Worlds.”

“Why doesn’t he come tell me himself for once?” Chenle bites out. “I’m sure he’s fully capable of talking to me.”

“He’s very”—Jisung chews on his lower lip, searching for the word—“busy.”

“Too busy to talk to one of his pilots? His own _cousin_?”

Jisung blanches. “I—you have to understand that he’s under a lot of stress. He has a lot he needs to handle.”

“So do _you_ ; that doesn’t mean he has an excuse. And he’s putting unnecessary restrictions on _my_ mission.”

“Chenle—”

“You leave in two weeks,” Renjun interrupts them, and Chenle whips around to see Renjun approaching him. This is the first time he’s directly talked to Chenle in the past month, and resentment curls in his stomach. He makes a face, just to see Renjun grimace. He’d used to say that if Chenle kept twisting his face in unnatural ways, his face would get stuck like that. Chenle had always called bullshit.

“Renjunnie!” Chenle says, tone cloyingly sweet. “So nice of you to join us.”

Jisung sharply inhales from next to them as he slowly backs away.

“The mission will take a little more than a day,” Renjun says, not acknowledging Chenle’s jab. “It’s a longer one because there are multiple parts to it.”

“It would be quicker if you let me go through the Core Worlds.”

“Absolutely _not_.”

“And why not?” Chenle asks, raising his voice. They’ve attracted the attention of several nearby commanders, but Chenle can’t say he minds; they never seemed to like him very much anyways. “I’d be fine.”

Renjun clears his throat. “I’m not entertaining this discussion.” With a final shake of his head, he stalks away, posture rigid and arms crossed.

“Good to see you, too!” Chenle calls after him.

Renjun audibly scoffs.

Chenle stomps out of the base, ensuring everyone can hear his footsteps above the increasing chatter in the room. When he reaches the edge of the forest, he throws himself down onto the ground. He plucks a particularly long blade of grass from beside him and knots it together until the entire surface is tangled in one big heap.

“You’ve got to stop riling him up. This happened last time you guys talked, too.”

Chenle petulantly throws the knotted piece of grass at Jisung, but it falls short, landing on Chenle’s leg. Jisung grabs it anyways, deftly undoing the knots before leaning over and dropping it onto Chenle’s forehead.

“I’m right, though,” Chenle tells him earnestly. “The Core Worlds aren’t that bad; I would be fine.”

Jisung plops down next to him, curling his knees up to his chest. He angles his head so he’s looking Chenle in the eye, and Chenle wants to say something to ease the sudden tension surrounding them, but the words are stuck in his throat.

“Why are you so insistent on going? It’ll only shave off an hour or two from your flight time.”

“It’s more exciting,” Chenle explains, though the reasoning sounds lame to say aloud. “Plus, I need to practice flying through more Imperial planets like the Core Worlds.”

Jisung doesn’t reply, likely mulling that over, and his gaze bores holes into Chenle. Chenle can’t tell if Jisung believes him or not.

“Be careful,” Jisung finally says.

Chenle picks the piece of grass off of his forehead and flicks it onto Jisung’s lap, grinning as Jisung’s _tsk_ s in annoyance.

“I will.”

—

Chenle blinks awake.

His chest aches, his breathing labored. He squeezes his eyes shut and slowly, he tries to calm the shallow breaths his lungs are clamping down on. Once the pain in his chest begins to subside, he forces his eyes open again.

The room is pitch-black, silent save for the snores around him and the occasional mumble. He spares a glance out of the small window towards the back of the bunker, and sees it's just as dark. The occasional streak of green and red punctuates the darkness, starfighters dipping in and out of the atmosphere as they race through the galaxy. Chenle has the sinking feeling that Arbra won't be safe for much longer.

It's only been a few hours since everyone was dismissed to the bunkers, Renjun insisting everyone needs to be at top condition for tomorrow's plans. Chenle knows it has something to do with the approaching Imperial fleet. Perhaps the Empire will dismiss Arbra as an inhabited, harmless planet, just as they'd done with the other Outer Rim planets, but the stakes are too high to risk anything.

After all, uncertainty is dangerous. It bites, wounds, _kills._ Chenle has been well-acquainted with all three.

He's found that it's easiest to shape uncertainty into the semblance of certainty, real enough to fool the smartest of men. Twist a twine rope a particular way, and maybe it’ll pass off as a cable. Something believable. Something to cling on to—at least, until it tears.

Chenle kicks off his blanket, ignoring the pain in his legs and the way his head swims as he stands. This is the earliest he's slept in months, and he’s once again remembering he doesn’t do it more often.

Honestly, he wasn't planning on sleeping until much later that night, but Jisung had caught his eye from across the base during dismissal and given him the nastiest look Chenle's ever seen, holding up the hangar keycard between his fingers. _Sleep,_ he'd mouthed, so ridiculously over-pronounced that Chenle unsuccessfully tried to stifle a snort. Chenle had pointed back at Jisung, who'd waved his hand dismissively and practically stared Chenle down as Chenle retreated to the bunkers with the rest of the pilots.

Chenle's gaze sweeps across the room, finally settling on a familiar figure that's pressed against the wall. Jisung, for once, is in his cot, the tattered blanket trapped under his sprawled figure as if he had practically collapsed onto the cot and fallen asleep immediately afterwards. Chenle tugs his blanket off of his own cot and steps around the other sleeping figures as he makes his way towards the end of the room.

Crouching next to Jisung, Chenle studies his pinched expression with a frown. He and Chenle are rather close in age, yet Chenle would still argue he's too young to be helping shoulder the weight of the entire Resistance. He’s more than capable by any means, but sometimes he can’t help but wonder what it would be like if Jisung had the opportunity to live as a normal kid rather than an asset to a fight for the entire _galaxy_.

Chenle smooths out his furrowed brows with a single finger, and Jisung sighs in his sleep, clutching his pillow tighter. He looks younger like this. The sight unlocks old memories that do nothing but make Chenle yearn for the past and for things he can't have. It's almost paradoxical, knowing everything he wants is painfully out of reach as he feels Jisung's fluttering heartbeat under the pads of his fingers.

There are always other universes out there, ones where he can have everything he wants and more, but Chenle’s intent on shaping that hypothetical universe into this one. Because he wants it all, impossibilities be damned.

Chenle drapes his blanket across Jisung, who stirs for just a moment at the added weight before slipping back into his slumber. A puff of air leaves his parted lips and he mumbles something incomprehensible.

Guilt crawls its way up Chenle’s throat as he can’t help but wonder if this might be the last time he’ll be privy to seeing this.

Chenle swallows. The ache from earlier returns, tugging and tugging and Chenle doesn’t want to risk himself unwinding, so he turns away, navigating out of the bunker’s twisting hallways and into the main base.

The first thing he notices is that he’s not alone.

Renjun’s in the middle of the room, by the edge of the command center. His shoulders are drawn in, as if minimizing the space he takes up in the galaxy to a pinprick, invisible. He and Chenle have always been different like that.

Chenle approaches where Renjun’s standing, hunched over something in his hands. His footsteps echo in the silence, but Renjun doesn’t seem to notice, too engrossed in whatever he’s looking at.

He could lob insults at Renjun, respark the argument that was left unfinished the week prior, but seeing him like this, guard down and vulnerable, is so rare that Chenle can’t bring himself to. He instead watches as Renjun toys with the object. Upon closer inspection, Chenle realizes with a start that it’s a ring; Renjun’s ring that he wears around a chain, next to his heart. Fittingly so. He slips the ring onto his finger, the diamonds surrounding a single lapis gemstone glinting in the light of the screen in front of them. The ghost of a smile plays on his lips as he runs a finger along the jewels, circling around the lapis gemstone, almost mindlessly.

“Thought you said you were going to bed?”

Renjun startles, glancing up at Chenle before removing the ring from his finger and hastily tucking the chain back underneath his shirt. He props himself up on the command base center, fingers clenching the sides as he refuses to meet Chenle’s gaze. Exhaustion is etched into his face and the tense line of his shoulders, but then again, it’s been over a year since Renjun’s truly looked at ease.

“Yeah, I’ll sleep soon,” Renjun mumbles.

Chenle’s eyes trace along the silver chain, glittering against Renjun’s pale skin, the end dipping behind his cotton shirt. It doesn’t conceal the ring completely; Chenle can still make out the faint outline of the gemstones.

“You don’t need to hide it from me, you know. Or any of us, for that matter. We all know about it.” Chenle tries to say it gently, because Renjun’s always been more sensitive when it comes to these matters, but he knows bitterness has seeped into his tone when Renjun begins to fiddle with the hem of his jacket, tugging at a loose string.

“I know.” Renjun’s voice is soft, resigning. “It’s not about that.”

_Out of sight, out of mind._ Practically Renjun’s motto at this point, if his persistent ignorance of Chenle’s entire existence is anything to go by.

“You should look for him."

Renjun snaps his head up, leveling Chenle with an icy glare. “You know I can’t do that.”

Chenle frowns. “Yes you can. You don’t know that he’s—”

“We’ve been over this, Chenle,” Renjun cuts him off sharply. “He’s gone. Nothing I can do about it.”

“You _can_ do something about it,” Chenle snaps in return. “You’re just choosing not to.”

Renjun flinches away; Chenle’s broken through to him, breached the surface to reveal what Renjun’s desperately trying to not let show. Even behind his glacial barrier, everything is transparent to Chenle. He purses his lips before sighing, bowing his head.

“I have a base to run, people to help protect. We’re in the middle of a war, Chenle. We don’t have the resources to waste on looking for—”

“Your fiance,” Chenle finishes. “Your fiance that you were due to marry a week after he left for Corellia.”

Renjun laughs, and it’s hollow, rebounding off of the walls of the base. All too familiar. “You really don’t need to rub it in.”

“I’m not trying to. I’m saying you have a choice here.” Chenle takes a step forward, but Renjun steps back in unison. Adamant on keeping the space between them. “You can search for him. We both know he's not gone, there's no way. He's the best of us."

"He's the best of us in so many other ways. Ways you'll never comprehend," Renjun bites out.

Chenle raises his eyebrows. He isn’t looking for a fight, but this seems to be leading to one. As most interactions with Renjun do recently. “I think I _comprehend_ just fine.”

“Chenle,” Renjun sighs, a hand coming up to massage the bridge of his nose, “don’t be a pain right now. It’s late.”

“Yeah, no shit it’s late.” Chenle jerks his head towards the pitch-darkness outside the base. “You were the one awake first.”

“Chenl—”

“Am I just always a _pain_ to be around?” Chenle asks. He takes another step closer, and Renjun just lets him. “Is that why you keep sending me off? Getting rid of me?”

“Why are you even complaining?”

“So you are.” Chenle narrows his eyes at Renjun.

With a scoff, Renjun turns towards a nearby screen, tapping at a diagram of the galaxy. He swipes between the Inner and Mid Rims, not bothering to reply to Chenle. A pause, a shaky breath, and his finger on a single planet. It stays there, unmoving. Corellia.

And then, finally:

“You think I could keep you down here? You’re just like him in that aspect. If I didn't send you off on missions, you’d lose your mind. Probably just leave on your own and practically throw yourself at the Empire.”

“He left on his own a few times and was just fine. I would be fine, too, if I did that.”

Renjun shakes his head, patronizing. “You wouldn’t.”

Chenle clenches his hands into fists—a part of him wishes he had his gloves, but the pain of nails digging into soft flesh spurs him on. “Don’t doubt me when you don’t know a _thing_ about any of this. He might be the best of us, but don’t forget he _taught_ me how to fly in the first place. He taught me how to be like him.”

Renjun doesn’t spare him a glance. He’s staring at a series of fluorescent red numbers hovering above the planet itself. Longitude, latitude, degrees; coordinates. “You could never be like him. You never will be.”

Chenle blinks, the words settling in the pit of his gut. “You asshole. You fucking _asshole_. He—”

“It’s a good thing.” Renjun shuts off the screen and offers Chenle a weary half-smile, somewhat amused by his enraged tirade. “I’m a bit jealous, to be honest. He’d probably be here if he was like you.”

Chenle furrows his brows in confusion. He’d spent years trying to grow into the footsteps left behind for him; he can’t imagine what he might have that would separate him from the molds he had tried his hardest to fill.

Renjun crosses the room, but just as he’s about to leave through the exit of the main base, he pauses. He's playing with the chain again, winding the metal around his fingertips. His eyes are downcast, yet even with the space between them, Chenle can see that the ferocity in his gaze from earlier has melted away, revealing something raw underneath.

“I’ve never had a choice, you know.”

Renjun’s gone before Chenle can ask him _what_ that even means. With a sigh, Chenle flicks on the screen Renjun was previously using. It opens to the same image as earlier.

He stares at the red coordinates on the screen. The coordinates stare back.

—

Chenle finds himself back in space sooner than he expected, for an emergency retrieval of information from one of the rebel outposts in the Mid Rim. Renjun had been the one to directly give him the mission; it hadn’t been more than a mere exchange of words, but it’s progress.

It had been simple, not requiring more than taking a data disk from a planet local and shooting whatever stormtroopers got in the way. One of his favorite types of missions, since it allowed for plenty of time to cruise the different systems and regions.

Now, he’s flying through the Inner Rim, about to pass by the Core Worlds when a transmission arrives from Haven Base. Chenle groans, steering himself away and back on his regular path before accepting it.

“Commander Zhong?”

Chenle immediately relaxes, grip loosening on his steering handles. “Hey, Park.”

“Everything good? We received reports of TIE Fighters around your area.”

“No issues with the eyeballs here,” Chenle drawls, switching a few dials as he readies to jump into hyperspace. “Were you worried?”

Jisung coughs awkwardly. “No, not really.”

Chenle raises his eyebrows, despite knowing Jisung can’t see him. “Really, now. Then why check in?”

“Sorry for making sure you weren’t _dead_ ,” Jisung snarks in reply.

“Touching.”

There’s a drawn-out exhale that tapers into silence, and Chenle doesn’t try to fill it. He waits, admiring the planet he’s currently passing by through the cockpit window. It’s an Imperial planet, judging from the TIE Fighters swarming the atmosphere. A pity, but most of the planets in the Inner Rim are under Imperial rule, anyways. He gives the planet a little wave, waggling his fingers, before continuing his path towards the edge of the region.

“I’m always worried about you,” Jisung finally admits, voice barely above a whisper.

Chenle rolls his eyes. “You don’t need to be. I have everything under control.”

“I—yeah. I know.” Another stretch of silence, and it’s painfully uncomfortable. Chenle knows Jisung hasn’t disconnected because he can hear Jisung fiddling with pieces of paper and tapping on his tablet. Chenle can imagine he’s glancing through the latest strategy plans, nose scrunched as he analyzes each one and drafts revisions that’ll hopefully lead to the best possible outcome. The Empire has been relentless recently and he knows Jisung’s stressed.

“I can’t help it,” Jisung says finally. “Renjun gets worried, too. You really remind him of Mark.”

Chenle clenches his teeth, staring straight ahead at the star fields. His hands have begun to tremble, and he grips the steering handles tighter in an attempt to chase it away. It’s hypocritical, really, and Chenle’s blood boils at the thought: Renjun, who had firmly told Chenle he would _never_ be like Mark, now says that Chenle reminds him of Mark. Renjun, who has barely ever expressed a modicum of concern towards Chenle. Absolutely goddamn _ridiculous_.

“Nevermind, forget it. I’ll see you back at base, but make sure to leave your ship in the hangar. Take care, commander.”

Jisung disconnects, and the silence is deafening. Somehow, not saying anything at all leaves a worse aftertaste on his tongue. Bitter.

Chenle accelerates to full speed.

—

Chenle hooks his head on Jisung’s shoulder. “Tell me about this,” he says, vaguely gesturing at the screen in front of him. He has no idea what he’s looking at, but Jisung’s been hovering over it for the past three hours, which means he’s due for a break and Chenle’s officially bored.

Jisung’s head snaps towards Chenle, eyes wide. He presses the back of his hand against Chenle’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay?”

Chenle bats his hand away, huffing indignantly. “Oh, fuck off. Am I not allowed to be curious?”

Jisung blinks at him. “No, not really.”

Chenle’s about to open his mouth to fire off a retort, maybe start an argument for the hell of it, when Jisung breaks into a smile. “So what exactly do you want me to show you?”

A great question, because Chenle has absolutely no idea.

“You choose,” he says with a nod, which seems to satisfy Jisung.

Jisung taps a few boxes on his screen until he procures what seems to be a zoomed-in diagram of a group of planets. Chenle immediately recognizes them. “Well, since your mission is tomorrow, I think—”

“Do _not_ lecture me about why the Core Worlds are dangerous. God, not again.”

Jisung has the decency to look sheepish as he swipes away from that diagram, instead opening up a new image that projects as a hologram in front of them. “Anatomy of typical TIE Fighters?” he offers, and Chenle grins, nudging his chin back into its previous spot in the crook of Jisung’s shoulder.

“Sounds good to me,” he murmurs into Jisung’s ear, who jolts.

“Don’t do that,” Jisung grumbles. As Jisung’s using two fingers to tilt the perspective of the hologram, Chenle scans the area around them.

There’s an empty data disk sitting off to the side, and Chenle snatches it when Jisung isn’t looking.

It weighs heavy in his pocket, but he opts to ignore that in favor of focusing on the warmth seeping through Jisung’s oversized jacket and whatever he’s babbling about. He _swears_ he’s paying attention, but there are some things right now that are worth paying a bit of extra attention to. Like Jisung himself.

Definitely Jisung.

—

Chenle strolls into the base right as the sun breaks through the clouds, the peak of the morning. The last bit of red from the sunrise is fading into a gentle blue.

It isn’t as busy as usual, with only a few commanders and Renjun standing around the screens and tables, mapping out plans. Renjun notices his presence, but refuses to look him in the eye. Chenle would get on his case, but there’s a special type of excitement buzzing in his veins. An undercurrent of anxiety as well, but he chooses not to dwell on that. He can’t really afford to dwell on that, either.

He does, however, make sure to be as loud as possible while preparing himself that morning, tramping through the base and jostling around everything he needs for the mission. A couple of commanders shoot him dirty looks. Chenle beams at them in reply.

Once Chenle’s getting settled in the cockpit, adjusting the navigation system and inserting the data disk for the journey he’s about to begin, Jisung strolls up to the hull of the ship—the only person in the vicinity.

"Don't die out there," Jisung says.

"I would never," Chenle replies with a roll of his eyes, but the smirk on his lips feels plastered. A wave of queasiness washes over him; it isn’t hard to imagine why, but he can’t think too deeply about it. He has to go.

Yet just as Jisung turns away, he finds himself calling out, "Wait, Park!"

Jisung raises his eyebrows at Chenle, not bothering to hide his confusion. This is out of routine, wildly so. Chenle’s never one to delay leaving Arbra for a mission.

"Yes?"

“I—I just—" Chenle's suddenly at a loss for words, and Jisung looks much too amused for his liking. He yanks off his restraint harnesses and scrambles out of the ship, landing ungracefully on his feet. He blinks up at Jisung, who blinks back down at him.

"Can I help you?"

"Yeah, one second."

He tilts his head up, cups Jisung's face, and presses their lips together. It's a bit rough on the edges and more hurried than he'd prefer, but he technically should be leaving Arbra’s atmosphere right now, so it's the best he can offer. It has an underlying sweetness to it that Chenle's always associated with Jisung, yet sends him into an adrenaline-induced high that he's only ever experienced while careening through space. The feeling of Jisung's lips on his is _euphoric_ and Chenle has to wonder why he's stopped himself from doing this for so long.

Chenle finds his hands wandering to Jisung’s shoulders, and has to wrench himself away with much difficulty. They’re still close enough that Chenle can feel Jisung’s breath against his mouth, and it tingles.

Jisung slowly raises a hand to trace his lips. "Oh."

"Yeah.” Chenle nods slowly, mostly to himself. His keen awareness coming from kissing Jisung has faded, replaced by muddied senses and a fuzzy brain. He finds his eyes wandering to Jisung’s lips again and forces himself to take a step back. “Just thought I'd finally do that."

"Finally?"

“Finally,” Chenle confirms, and Jisung’s cheeks go red.

“Good to know,” he mumbles.

Chenle runs a hand through his hair, messing up the pathetic attempt of styling it he had done earlier. Jisung follows the movement for a second before catching Chenle’s hand, ignoring Chenle’s quizzical look. He turns it over and traces a pattern on Chenle’s palm, fingertip barely grazing the glove.

“Safe to say you like them?”

“Them?” Chenle repeats. “The gloves?”

Jisung nods.

Chenle rubs his thumb against the glove, accidentally bumping against Jisung’s fingers. He’s broken into the stiff material of the glove, and it now fits like a second skin. “Did you get these for me?”

“I did,” Jisung admits with a shy smile. “Found them lying around, and I figured they would fit you.”

“Not bad, Park.” The _thank you_ goes unspoken, but Chenle knows Jisung’s aware it’s there.

“Doing my best.” Jisung’s finger continues to draw mindlessly on Chenle’s palm, and Chenle feels a shape he recognizes: two curved halves. Chenle bites back a grin. Of course Jisung’s a romantic.

“Promise me you’ll sleep soon, okay?” Chenle says suddenly, catching Jisung off guard. “As in before midnight.”

Jisung drops Chenle’s hand, a laugh escaping him. “Since when have you cared so much?”

“Since you started looking like you were one long blink away from passing out.”

“I could say the same to you.”

Chenle glares at him.

“Fine, sure, I will. Now, go!” Jisung shoos Chenle away towards his ship. “I’ll see you later! Be careful!”

"Yeah," Chenle says quietly, and the queasiness from earlier returns. He nods at Jisung before jogging back to his ship, climbing up the ladder and into the cockpit.

A press of the ignition, a yank of the steering handles, and Chenle’s racing out of Arbra’s atmosphere. He’s scared to look behind him.

But he’ll be back for Jisung.

He hopes so, at least.

—

Chenle takes down the last of the TIE Fighters with a cleverly-placed blast from his laser cannons, taking out the twin ion drives with one hit. Jisung’s lecture the day before had been surprisingly helpful. Maybe he should pay attention to what Jisung tells him more often.

Speaking of, the comms blink with the arrival of a transmission request from base. Chenle accepts it instinctively.

"Commander Zhong, what the _hell_ do you think you're doing," a voice crackles through, and Chenle grins, leaning back in his seat.

"Hey, Park."

"You're straying way off your path. Is your navigation system broken or something?"

"Nope." Chenle fiddles with the data disk inserted in the left panel of the dashboard. The coordinates are downloaded to his system; now, he just has to get to them. He’s almost there. Just a few hundred more miles.

“You’re approaching the Core World—Chenle! You said you wouldn’t!” Jisung’s tone sounds so agitated that a surge of guilt rushes through him. Chenle tries to push it down, smother it with a reminder of just _what_ he’s sought out to do.

“I thought you went to sleep,” Chenle continues conversationally. “It’s late.”

“I was going to. But you weren’t back yet.”

Chenle clenches his eyes shut. He should’ve known. The ship suddenly lurches, jerking Chenle to the side. He glances around himself, searching for any sign of trouble, perhaps a rogue TIE Fighter or mercenary ship. Nothing. Chenle blinks at the handles before gripping them tighter than earlier. Maybe he had pulled them by accident.

“—le, are you even listening?”

Chenle shakes his head, trying to clear it. That was just a minor bump, it’ll be fine. “Yeah, yeah of course. What’s up?”

“You’re going to breach the Corellian atmosphere soon.”

Sure enough, Chenle can make out the shades of blue and green of Corellia’s surface. Bright lights dot the surface, a product of the hundreds of booming urban areas. But according to the coordinates, Mark wasn’t near any of those when he disappeared. He still has a bit further to go.

“Oh, am I?” Chenle asks, flipping a few dials. It would be easier to travel through the atmosphere than the space above it; any TIE Fighters he might encounter would be easy to get rid of. They have shit aim, anyways.

He increases the pressure on his engine to dip the final few miles into Corellia’s atmosphere.

“Go figure,” Chenle says. “How are things going on your end?”

“Don’t distract me,” Jisung bites in reply. “What are you even _doing_?”

The data disk beeps, and Chenle immediately brightens. He made it to Mark’s coordinates. Now he just has to land.

He adjusts the thrusters to full speed, only for his ship to shudder again, the metal creaking under the added strain of the atmosphere. “Come on, come _on_ ,” Chenle mutters to himself.

An alarm suddenly blares, and Chenle’s heart drops into his stomach.

“What the hell was _that_?” Jisung shrieks. “Chenle, what’s going on? You need to get out.”

" _Shit_ my ion drive is busted," Chenle groans, casting a glance at the flashing red light on the dashboard. He disables the alarm with a press of a button and checks the status of the engine. It’s not about to collapse on him just yet. He still has time.

“You never brought your ship back for service, did you?”

Chenle grimaces. “Yeah, might’ve made a small mistake there.”

" _Goddammit_ , Commander Zhong, pull out of orbit," Jisung says, voice trembling. "This is an order, get out."

Chenle can make out the tips of a forest through the clouds. He’s almost there. One final push of the engine and he’ll make it.

But one final push seems to be what does it; his engine stutters, once, twice, and then gives out. A quick glance out of the side of the cockpit shows that bright red and orange flames have begun to consume the back of the ship, where the ion drive is.

"Well, that's on fire," Chenle remarks, pressing his lips together. "Oops."

"You stupid, _stupid—”_ Jisung cuts himself off with a sob. "Get _out_ of there, Chenle! Do you have a death wish?"

Chenle snorts, taking one more look at the flames. It might be possible to land before they reach the other vital parts of the ship. The thrusters are still somewhat operational. "You sound so worried."

"That's because I am, you idiot! You're going to crash at your current speed! A-Wings aren't created for this kind of handling, not to mention your engine is giving out! You have less than two minutes before you're literally smashed to pieces on Corellia’s surface!"

Chenle flips the emergency landing switches, only to no avail. The world is whipping by too fast for him to catch up as his ship spirals downwards. He shakes the steering handles, but his ship barely responds, doing no more than jerking to the side.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says under his breath. He’s losing control of his ship.

"Hey, Jisung," Chenle says, hoping he sounds more collected than he feels. He has to.

"Maybe if you just—"

"Jisung."

"Ninety seconds—"

" _Jisung_ ," Chenle says sharply, and Jisung finally falls silent. He takes in a breath, wincing at how uneven it is as something in him shakes loose, snaps. He can’t lose his composure.

Yet, for once, he lets himself unravel.

“You know, when I first saw you on Arbra, I genuinely thought you were some lost kid or something. You were so small and awkward. Renjun adored you the second he laid eyes on you.”

“Chenle, now’s really not the time—”

“I don’t know when things changed. I feel like it’s always been like this, you know? But maybe it was two years ago. Your first task as commander, when you were organizing a fleet in the Mid Rim. I was part of that fleet. You made sure I was safe. All of us were safe. I think that was when I realized—” Chenle bites the inside of his cheek, hard enough to draw blood. “Yeah. It was then.”

“Chenle, what are you _doing_?”

Chenle smiles gently. “Telling you all the things Mark didn’t get to say to Renjun.”

Jisung's breath hitches, and it's suddenly silent, as if it's just him and Jisung in Corellia’s atmosphere, as if his precious A-Wing isn't burning to a crisp and Chenle along with it.

“I don't know if I’m going to come back from this,” Chenle admits. His voice is quiet, but it’s loud, too loud, amid the deathly silence of the cockpit. A premonition of sorts. Chenle hates it. “I have to try and leave without regrets, you know?”

“Chenle Zhong, you are _not_ dying on me, don’t you _dare_ die on me.” Hysteria fills Jisung's voice as it rises in pitch, the words coming out in a jumbled rush. “You’re going to be fine—”

“I’m sorry Ji, really,” Chenle cuts him off. The old nickname slips out, and Chenle can’t bring himself to care. “I thought I could pull one last thing off. Guess Renjun was right about this.”

“Chenle, shut _up._ You’re going to come out alive. You're going to be fine. You still have time, it's fine. Just get out of there, Chenle, _please_."

The surface of Corellia is fast approaching. He’s running out of time.

“Ji, you know I love you, right?”

Jisung doesn’t reply, muffled sobs audible through the comms. Chenle’s heart hurts. It _aches_.

“It’s—” he pauses. Panic has seeped into his voice, desperation crawling its way between every word. “It’s always been you. Always will be.”

He glances down at his dashboard. He has mere seconds

“Che—”

Chenle slams down the _end transmission_ button as the tip of his ship collides into the surface.

He clenches his eyes shut, more on instinct than anything else. Swallows.

Dimly, he notes how strange it is that regret and guilt taste the same. Chalky, bitter, and as painful as the rivulets that shoot through him as the world fades into a consuming black.

—

“—y god, oh my god.”

A grating screech, footsteps.

Chenle swims in and out of consciousness, darkness blending with blurry images of the world around him. A face, though Chenle can’t make out whose. More mumbled speech that Chenle can’t understand; he can only really register the throbbing of his head.

It hurts to keep his eyes open, and he lets them slip shut again.

—

Chenle comes to sprawled on a bed, a pile of leaves cushioning his head. His arms are heavily bandaged, and he can’t move them without hissing at the pain. He forces himself to sit up in the bed, propping himself up on the back wall of whatever hut he seems to be in.

One of his gloves is resting on the makeshift bedside table, if it can even be called that; it’s a crude block of wood, the top uneven. But it works well enough to support the glass sitting besides a few of Chenle’s belongings, so he snatches the glass of water and greedily gulps all of it down.

As he sets it back down, he glances around the hut. It’s quaint, unlike the steel bunkers he spends his sleeping and waking hours in. He has no recollection of ever coming here, which is strange, but there’s also a chance Chenle’s dead right now and this is some sort of great beyond. Maybe a hallucination or fever dream. Then again, those tend to be a bit more colorful. And if this is truly the great beyond, it’s safe to say he’s pretty damn disappointed.

“Hello?” he calls out, pushing himself off of the bed. His legs shake with each step, but it slowly becomes easier by the time he reaches the doorframe to the room. He pokes his head outside, where someone’s crouched over a plot of plants, tending to them.

“Excuse me!” Chenle shouts, and the man startles, finally noticing Chenle’s presence.

He stands up and brushes himself off, then turns to face Chenle. Chenle gawks at the sight.

“Mark?” he whispers. He rubs his eyes, not believing what he’s seeing. “Holy shit, is that really you?”

Mark beams. He’s about to reply when Chenle shakes his head; he needs a way to check.

“Mark,” he begins quietly, “what’s Renjun’s favorite gemstone?” Only he and Mark know the answer to that.

“Lapis,” Mark says immediately, eyes shining. “It was the color of my robes when we met. He said that—”

“—you were the brightest thing in that throne room,” Chenle finishes. He’s heard the story countless times from Renjun, back when they used to curl up together on a cramped cot and Renjun would whisper to Chenle until he fell asleep.

Fatigue aches in his bones, but it doesn’t halt Chenle as he rushes towards Mark, leaping into his arms.

“It’s really you,” he mumbles against Mark’s grimy jacket, and Mark chuckles, patting his back.

“It really is. It’s been a while, Chenle.”

Chenle raises his head from where it’s tucked in the crook of Mark’s shoulder. “How did you even find me? Or did I find you?”

“Oh, you found me alright.” Mark chuckles. “You practically crashed in my backyard, near the bushes I usually get berries from.”

Chenle smiles, satisfied. “So it worked.” At least his mission wasn’t a total bust; he found Mark and he’s still in one piece.

But Jisung doesn’t know that. Or Renjun. Or anyone besides him and Mark, for that matter.

“It’s a miracle you didn’t die,” Mark continues. “Honestly, it’s thanks to whoever worked on your ship; the platinum in the cockpit frame helped reduce the impact of the crash.”

Chenle makes a mental note to thank Jeno for that whenever he sees him again. If he sees him again.

“Is my ship—”

“It looks like a scrap pile,” Mark tells him before he can even finish asking the question.

“So, unsalvageable?”

“You literally could not tell it was a starfighter from far away; the cockpit was the only part that remained whole.”

Chenle winces. His A-Wing had served him well; he’ll miss it. He just wishes he could’ve had one more flight before completely destroying the ship. Or, ideally, not destroy it at all.

“You crashed really badly, Chenle.” Mark frowns, flicking Chenle’s forehead. “What were you _thinking_?”

“I was _thinking_ that I could find you and then bring you back to Haven Base,” Chenle snaps. “Things went… not as planned, but I did that, didn’t I? Half of it, anyways.”

Mark pulls away to gather the tools he had used to sow the garden. He piles them into a sack by his feet, then hoists it over his shoulder. With a tilt of his head towards the hut, indicating for Chenle to follow him, he strolls back inside.

“I came to _save_ you!” Chenle shouts at his retreating back. “A simple ‘thank you’ would suffice!”

Chenle huffs before hobbling after him. He finds Mark in a room he hadn’t noticed earlier, some type of storage place.

“You could thank me for saving you,” he repeats as Mark sorts through the bag and lays out the different tools. Honestly, he hadn’t known Mark could even garden, but there weren’t many opportunities to grow plants while being a pilot in the Resistance.

“Saving me isn’t exactly crashing your ship on the same planet I got stuck on,” Mark says, amused. “Have you ever considered that maybe I didn’t _want_ to be saved?”

“Bullshit. That’s bullshit.” Chenle throws himself into a nearby chair to sulk, ignoring the way his body protests the movement.

Mark laughs. “Fair enough, that’s not entirely true. But still, you shouldn’t have come.”

Chenle meets Mark’s gaze, unyielding. “And why not? I knew you were alive. Renjun did, too.”

Mark’s expression softens at the mere mention of Renjun’s name. Chenle glances down at his right hand and notices a ring, an exact copy of Renjun’s except for the jewel set in the center of it: a ruby. They had liked the idea of contrasting-colored gemstones; the rings were one of the few luxuries he and Renjun would allow themselves.

“That’s good. Is he doing well?”

“Why didn’t you come find us?” Chenle asks instead. “It’s been over a _year_ , Mark.”

“How would I? Steal an imperial ship and risk being discovered? Have some stormtroopers trail me back to base and expose you all? This place is crawling with Imperial soldiers.”

Once Mark finishes emptying out the sack, he twists it into a ball and tosses it into a corner of the room. He drags a chair from the other side of the table and sits before returning to organizing his tools, taking his sweet time as if trying to gauge how long it’ll take until Chenle will lose it.

(It won’t take long. His head _hurts_ and Mark’s here spewing nonsense about ‘not wanting to go back.’ If Chenle wasn’t so glad to see him, he would’ve punched Mark already.)

“You’re both terrible. You were alive, and he _knew_ you were alive, but neither of you did anything.”

“I’m glad he didn’t,” Mark says, and Chenle’s head snaps up so quickly he hears a joint pop.

“ _What_?”

“I told him not to.” Mark shrugs, and the regret behind his smile is poorly concealed. He returns back to the metal tools on the table, running his finger along the edge of a tarnished spade. “Years ago, I made him promise not to go searching if anything happened to me. We can’t waste any resources.”

Chenle narrows his eyes at Mark. “That’s a terrible promise. It wouldn’t have been a waste.”

Mark sets down his spade with a sigh. He props a hand on his knee, gaze stern. “What if I had been dead?”

“You weren’t.”

“Yes, but what if I had been?” Mark raises his brows, and takes Chenle’s silence as a sign to continue. “A gut feeling isn’t a fact. You guys might’ve felt like I was alive, but what if you came here, only to find my ship’s wreckage and me dead inside? What if you were shot down even before you made it to the surface? Or captured? I couldn’t risk any of that happening because of me.”

Chenle frowns. “Those are all hypotheticals. It’s possible for none of that to happen. I didn’t get shot. I didn’t get captured. I was perfectly fine. And I found you.”

“Yes, but you also _crashed_ ,” Mark says, pointing at the bandages wrapped around most of Chenle’s limbs. “You are _not_ ‘perfectly fine.’”

Chenle sinks lower in the chair, lip jutting out in a pout. “Yes I am,” he mumbles, even though it’s a lost cause.

“Chenle, what’s going on is bigger than any of us. We have to think about the good of the Resistance, the entire _galaxy_.”

“It would’ve been helpful if we had our best pilot to fight for the freedom of the entire galaxy,” Chenle snarks. Mark massages the bridge of his nose; Chenle’s pretty sure he picked up the habit from Renjun.

“Don’t you miss Renjun?” Chenle presses. Maybe a little mean to bring up Renjun to prove his point, but it’s necessary. “You can see him again if we go back.”

“You’re saying all of this like we have some ship to hop aboard and use.”

Chenle leans forward. “You said it yourself: it’s possible to steal an Imperial ship.”

“When did I—that was _hypothetical,_ ” Mark bursts out, burying his head in his hands. “Chenle, please.”

“I’m going to steal an Imperial ship,” Chenle announces. “And you can’t stop me. And then we’ll go back to Haven Base and everything will be fine.”

“You can barely walk properly!”

“Okay! Well…” Chenle makes a face. “When I can _walk_ , I’m going to steal a ship. Or maybe Jisung’s going to come and find me.”

Mark raises his head in recognition of the name. He scrunches his nose. “Jisung? The little Strategic Officer? Has he ever even flown a starfighter?

Chenle dismissively waves a hand. “He’ll be able to find me. I know he will.”

“Chenle.” Mark rubs at his eyes, already weary from their prolonged argument. “We were some of the best pilots Arbra had to offer.”

“Are. We _are._ ”

Mark presses his lips together. “Right. We _are_. But the point is, what makes you think someone like Jisung can fly in and find you when we couldn’t even make it in without crashing?”

“I wouldn’t say this if I didn’t think he could,” Chenle retorts.

“Don’t get your hopes up. On any of your plans, for that matter.”

“Is that what happened? Did you give up on Renjun?” Chenle’s blood boils at the thought, and he sorely hopes that it’s not true. Mark and Renjun had been attached at the hip for years; even before they were lovers, they were best friends, closer than anyone on Haven Base.

“God, never,” Mark backtracks, eyes wide, and Chenle exhales in relief. “I don’t know, I just—I just gave up on myself, I guess. No use in entertaining impossible desires, anyways.”

“But none of this is impossible, Mark!” Chenle leans forward, eyes darting across Mark’s features. From this close, he can see how much Mark’s aged even in the one year he’s spent on Corellia. He’s exhausted, wrinkles prominent. Maybe this is the first time he’s talked to someone else. That thought alone is sobering.

“Chenle, I hope Jisung does find out you’re alive, even if he isn’t able to come and rescue you personally, because that’s… not very feasible right now. I’m sorry if I’m coming off as rude, I just—” Mark runs a hand through his hair. “It’s been a long time. Let’s just drop it, okay? It’s getting late. I’ll make us some food.” He stands, pushing in the chair before making his way towards the exit.

Chenle very much does _not_ want to drop the topic, but he gives in anyways. He’s starving and it’s been a long day—or days, as he’s not sure how long he was unconscious.

Just as Mark’s about to leave, Chenle calls out, “Hey, Mark?”

Mark turns around, waiting.

“I’m really glad I found you,” Chenle admits. “I missed you.”

Mark smiles gently. “I missed you, too.”

Once Chenle’s alone in the room, he shifts his gaze to the small window of the hut, revealing the end of the evening’s sunset. He wonders if Jisung’s doing the same, watching as darkness swallows the remaining vivid colors. It’s late, but Jisung’s probably awake anyways.

Is he hovering in front of a screen, searching for Chenle, just like Renjun did with Mark?

Is it bad if Chenle says he hopes so?

—

Chenle scours the floor of the forest, bag in one hand and scissors in the other. Truthfully, he isn’t even sure what he’s looking for; Mark had shoved the bag into his hand right after he woke up, chipperly announcing, “We’re going scavenging!”

The word itself made it sound like they would be searching through old ruins of wrecked ships and forgotten towns—not going berry-picking.

It’s so boring Chenle almost wishes he was still bandaged all over like he was a week ago, when Mark first brought him to his hut, so he could have an excuse. Now, he just has a few small bandages and a burn on his right forearm that’s almost fully healed.

Chenle spots something hanging from a low branch and jumps up to grab it. He wrinkles his nose upon seeing what the _thing_ actually is. The berries are a dizzying shade of neon green, and Chenle seriously doubts they’re even edible.

Mark pops up behind him, plucking the cluster out of Chenle’s hands. “This is enough to last a few days! Nice work, Le.” He ruffles Chenle’s hair before disappearing to dig through the roots of a nearby tree. He studies what appears to be a strangely-shaped vegetable before sticking it into his sack.

“Is this how you live your life now? Collecting berries and whatever _that_ is?” Chenle asks, pointing at another type of vegetable Mark has in his hands. “I appreciate you making sure we don’t, like, starve to death, but don’t tell me you actually enjoy this over piloting a starfighter.”

“It’s pretty nice,” Mark says, sniffing the vegetable before tossing it into his bag. “Do you have anything in your bag yet?”

It’s the third time Mark’s asked that in the last two hours, and the answer is still: “Not really, no.”

Mark sighs, returning to yanking roots from the ground. “Look, all of this isn’t ideal, but for now, I’m doing my part. And that’s making sure I don’t hinder anything the rebels do. I’m still a part of the Resistance, even if I’m no longer actively doing anything.” He looks up to meet Chenle’s eyes. “The Resistance has always been my life. It always will be.”

“This is why Renjun liked you more than me,” Chenle mutters under his breath, but Mark manages to hear it anyway. He shakes his head.

“You’re his only family left, Chenle. He loves you.”

Chenle rolls his eyes and he kicks at a patch of coarse dirt. The grains scatter across the grass, and he breaks off a particularly long blade of grass and knots it together. Mark’s still waiting for a reply, so Chenle unknots the piece of grass excruciatingly slowly before giving him one.

“Then how come he always refused to talk to me? Always tried to get me out of his sight?”

“He’s hurting, Chenle. You can’t blame him.”

Chenle snorts, fixing Mark with an incredulous glare. “You’re the one who hurt him!”

Mark blinks, stunned. “I knew this planet was dangerous, but I didn’t know that I would end up _stranded_ here.”

“We can make amends by going back,” Chenle says, voice thick. “But you’re refusing to find a way to go back.”

“Chenle—”

Chenle balls his hands into fists. He’s wearing the remaining glove of the pair, leaving him acutely aware of his untrimmed nails digging into his left palm. He misses his other glove.

“I’m going on a walk.”

Mark frowns. “Do you even—wait, Chenle.”

Before Chenle can turn to leave, Mark grabs his hand and presses something into his palm. It’s a compass, a small red needle twitching underneath the glass casing.

“My hut will always be towards the north. Use your pistol to defend yourself if needed, and come back before dark, okay?”

Chenle nods, closing his fingers around the compass. “I will.”

With that he leaves to wander aimlessly through the forest. It reminds him of Arbra, though the roots aren’t as large and the branches aren’t as thorny and there’s no Jisung waiting for him at the mouth of the forest. The bitter taste he’s become so acquainted with returns, and a part of him wishes he had one of those toxic-colored berries to chase it away.

He much prefers Arbra’s forests to this one.

When he reaches the edge of the forest, the trees give way to grassy plains that seem to stretch for miles. Chenle’s about to turn away when he notices a strange lump on the horizon. Perhaps another hut like Mark’s or an outpost of sorts.

Chenle jogs towards it, entranced. It slowly comes into focus; two sharp points, a spherical object in the middle and— _oh._ It’s a TIE Fighter.

He grabs his pistol from his back pocket and loops around to the back of the ship. Wrenching the top latch open, Chenle’s prepared to fire at whatever he might find inside.

But there’s nothing.

The cockpit is empty.

It’s an abandoned, wrecked TIE Fighter.

The front part seems to have taken the brunt of the crash, with the main viewport in cracked pieces and the sides of the wings bent, but the back half seems to be fine. And most importantly, the engine.

So with the right tools and some extra parts, this can be fixed.

“Mark!” Chenle shouts, spinning on his heel as he begins to sprint back North. “Mark! Mark Lee!” he chants over and over until he practically runs into Mark, who’s tending to the firepit outside of the hut.

“Where’s the fire?” Mark asks him before bursting out laughing. “Get it? Because”—he points at the red flames in the firepit—“fire.”

“Ha ha, yes, very funny. Now listen!” Chenle grabs his shoulders. “I found an eyeball.”

Mark’s smile immediately drops off his lips. “Holy shit, did they see you? Are you okay?”

“What? No, wait, this was a fighter that crashed.”

“Oh,” Mark says, eyebrows furrowing together. “There are plenty of those. It’s easy to lose control if you’re going too fast here.”

“No, Mark, _listen_.” Chenle groans impatiently. “A lot of the parts are salvageable. The ion drive is still intact. We can repair it and use it to get back to Arbra. And if there are more of these wrecks, we can take the parts we don’t have from the other ships and use them!”

Mark eyes him skeptically. “Are you sure that’ll work?”

“Please,” Chenle begs, tugging Mark’s hand. “Please help me. We won’t know until we try, but if it does work, we can make it back.”

“But it’ll be dangerous to leave, even if we can fix a fighter enough to get it to fly. There are still patrols that sometimes pass through this area. Remember the one we literally had to run away from a few days ago?”

Chenle does. It had been three stormtroopers marching in a line, searching through the forest. One had almost caught Chenle, and they would have if Mark hadn’t killed all three with well-timed shots to the chest. But Chenle’s a different person on the ground and in space; space is _his_ territory, the area his starfighter occupies his own.

“This is the least dangerous option we have,” Chenle presses. “We’ll be disguised as Imperial Fighters, that’s more than enough to cast off suspicion. _Please_ , Mark.”

He can tell Mark’s starting to cave; his brows are furrowed contemplatively, as if weighing his options. Chenle squeezes his hand in a wordless plea.

And then finally, Mark nods.

—

“If we maneuver the left wing to the side, we can have better access to the power lines and see if they’re still in working conditions,” Chenle explains as he and Mark walk to the wreckage. “It’s big enough in the cockpit to fit two seats, so we can install one towards the rear of the pilot seat if we can find a whole one in another ship.”

Once they make it to the TIE Fighter, Chenle wastes no time to clamber into the cockpit, fiddling with a few knobs and getting a feel for the ship. It’s foreign but creates a sense of longing for his own ship, and he wonders if Mark can bring him to the sight of the crash later, to at least bid it goodbye.

He presses a few buttons on the dashboard and tries to start the ignition. Nothing. Chenle sighs and calls out to Mark, “We need to fix the fuel sources. Without them, the ship won’t even turn on.”

“How do you know so much about TIE Fighters?” Mark yells in reply from outside the ship. Chenle grins, winking at his reflection in the shattered transparisteel before hoisting himself out of the cockpit.

“Jisung told me a lot about them,” he explains as he climbs down the hull. “Gave me a whole presentation and everything. They’re not that difficult to understand. Or fix, probably.”

Mark cocks a brow, both incredulous and thoroughly amused. “That’s how you guys bonded?”

Chenle kicks Mark’s shin as Mark yelps, “Kidding! Kidding.”

Chenle rolls his eyes. He crouches down by the arm of one of the wings to remove a panel, and quickly identifies a few sparking wires. He’ll need replacements for those because they’re practically useless in this state, and makes a mental note of that before yanking them out.

“So, Jisung, huh?” Mark says, and out of Chenle’s peripheral he can see Mark playing with solar panels of the opposite wing. His tone is much too smug for this to be him trying to make small talk. “Me and Renjun had our bets on you two. Renjun thought it would take you at least until you guys are twenty-two.”

“Well, he was two years off,” Chenle huffs as he tears out one last wire before standing, clutching the bundle of wires in his gloved hand. “Kinda confessed to him before, like, nearly dying.”

“Dramatic.”

“ _Romantic_ ,” Chenle corrects. “And maybe slightly traumatizing.”

“You definitely owe him an apology.”

“Oh, I owe him a couple,” Chenle snorts. “He’s going to find out I’m not dead, and then he’s going to kill me.”

He can picture it now: him sleeping peacefully in the bunkers, only to wake up to Jisung smothering him with a pillow. Truthfully, not the worst way to go.

“Anyways”—Chenle holds up the wires in his hand—“first order of business is finding working versions of these wires and replacing the viewfinder, then we can tackle the fuel issue. We have all the tools to do everything, so we can start on that tomorrow.”

When Mark doesn’t reply, Chenle waves a hand in front of his face. He snaps a few times, and Mark jerks. “You still with me?”

“Sorry, just—Chenle, you’ve grown up so much,” Mark says in wonderment. “You’re making me feel old.”

“It was one year,” Chenle replies with a roll of his eyes.

“But still, it feels like so much longer.”

Chenle smiles. He knows what Mark’s trying to say, even if he’s expressing it in the most evasive way possible. “You want to come back, don’t you?”

Mark swallows, and he bites his lower lip. He’s blinking rapidly, refusing to meet Chenle’s gaze. “I missed you guys. A lot.”

Chenle nods, and his cheeks hurt from how wide his smile’s become. “Then let’s fix this ship and go home together, Mark. We missed you, too.”

—

The TIE Fighter is half-finished; they still need to repair the left wing and figure out how to work the fuel cells, but the viewfinder has been completely replaced with a new panel of transparisteel they’d stolen from a different ship, and a few new wires have been installed into the arms of the ship. It’s an exhausting project, but Chenle’s intent on fixing the ship to working condition so he can finally leave this wretched place.

It’s almost ironic, how badly he wanted to travel to Corellia, only to now say with complete certainty that Corellia is, by far, one of the worst planets he’s ever had the displeasure of going to. Sure, he’s been constrained to only a single section of a planet with several different climates, but this climate is all he knows and has ruined the entire planet for him. It’s like Arbra, but worse.

Chenle’s wiping off the machine oil from his hands one afternoon when Mark comes barreling into the room.

“Someone’s coming,” he warns, already brandishing a blaster. “I can’t see their face, but arm yourself just in case.”

“Another patrol?” Chenle asks, tossing the rag to the side and grabbing his pistol from where it’s lying on his bed. Mark shakes his head.

“They’re not wearing any armor. I have no idea where they came from, but they’re coming this way.”

Chenle frowns. No one ever stumbles upon a place like this by chance; they’re practically in the middle of nowhere. He shuffles after Mark, who presses a finger to his lip and directs Chenle to hide behind a wall.

Mark then grabs an old helmet from a nearby table and puts it on, effectively concealing his face. He slips out of the house.

“Who are you?” he shouts. “Who are you affiliated with? There’s nothing to see here and I have nothing to offer you. State your business or leave.”

Chenle flattens his back against the wall, but slowly inches closer to the door. He peers around the frame to see Mark approaching the hooded figure, blaster raised. Chenle swallows, glancing down at the pistol in his hands. If the person doesn’t yield, he might have to use it.

“Wait! Wait, I swear I’m not here to hurt you. I’m looking for someone.”

“And who might that someone be—Jisung?” Mark gasps, and Chenle’s heart stops in his chest.

_Jisung?_

Chenle throws down his gun and sprints out of the door. The moment he lays eyes on the figure he _knows_ it’s Jisung. He’s replaced his usual oversized jacket with a cloak, and his hair sticks up in tufts, but most important of all is the way his jaw drops at the mere sight of Chenle.

Chenle skids to a stop right in front of Jisung. “Park!” His voice comes out ridiculously high-pitched, and he clears his throat. “Hi. Hey.”

Jisung blinks rapidly. “Chenle, oh my god. You’re here.”

Chenle pats himself down. “In the flesh,” he says with an air of nonchalance, but his heart has leapt into his throat, beating wildly.

“I—” Jisung takes a step closer, shaking his head to himself. “You’re—”

He reaches out a trembling finger, letting it hover right above Chenle’s cheek.

Chenle nods. Whispers, “I’m here, promise.”

Jisung draws back for a moment. He lets out a shallow breath, then rests his finger on Chenle’s jaw. Skin-against-skin. It releases some of the building pressure in his chest, ache bleeding into warmth. Chenle wants to kiss him so badly.

He traces Chenle’s features with a trembling finger, outlining his cheekbones and nose and lips and then finally, his disbelief dissolves into wonder and relief. “You’re really here.”

Chenle grins, hoping his lower lip isn't visibly wobbling. "Miss me?"

"I hate you so _fucking_ much," Jisung hisses, but then he's pulling Chenle into a kiss, desperate and salty from the tears streaking down his face. "You stupid, _stupid_ little—”

"You know, there are more ways to describe me besides stupid. Like courageous, resourceful, handsome."

Jisung blinks at Chenle, giving him a once-over. His fingers brush against the prickling of stubble growing on Chenle’s chin. “You look horrible.”

Chenle would normally throw that back at him in the form of some childish insult, but he only laughs and combs down Jisung’s hair until it looks somewhat decent. Oh, how he’d taken this for granted. He pulls Jisung’s head down for a kiss, and another, and another, and soon the sweetness of it all outweighs any lingering bitterness on his tongue.

When they break apart, Jisung’s eyes are dazed, the tips of his ears red, and Chenle knows then he’ll never get tired of this sight.

Mark coughs from somewhere behind them. “I’m going to go… not here. See you.”

Chenle and Jisung both give him a small wave, and Mark disappears into the hut, helmet tucked under his arm.

Jisung turns back to Chenle. “You nearly gave me a heart attack, you know.”

Chenle winces. “Yeah, sorry about that.”

"I told you to be careful, like, a hundred times!" Jisung punches his arm, but it’s so light that Chenle barely feels it.

“You did. Sorry. Again.” If he wants to make it up to Jisung, he’s got to start apologizing right now, because it’s going to take a while.

“I also told you to get your ship serviced _several_ times, and to not go near the Core Worlds, and to leave Corellia’s atmosphere while you still could and—you know what, should I just make a counter for this? The amount of times I can say ‘I told you so’?”

“Hypothetically, yes. But please don’t. Spare me.” Chenle grabs Jisung’s hand, intertwining their fingers. The blush spreads to Jisung’s cheeks.

“I’ll consider it,” Jisung mumbles. He glances down at their interlaced hands. “You still have the gloves.”

“Only one,” Chenle admits. “The other went missing during the crash.”

Jisung caresses the back of Chenle’s hand with his thumb. He can feel the movement through the fabric of the glove, gentle and comforting.

“But you took good care of them.”

Chenle smiles. “I did.”

“I’m glad.” Jisung squeezes his hand. “And, for the record, I literally traveled across the galaxy to find you, so if you had lost them in the three months you were stuck here, I would’ve yelled at you.”

“Yelled?” Chenle raises his eyebrows.

“Lightly scolded,” Jisung amends.

“Sulked.”

Jisung huffs. “Whatever.”

“Wait.” Chenle pauses, peering closely at Jisung. “How did you even travel here?”

“I had some people help me learn how to fly for your stupid ass. And stole one of our ships.”

“You stole a _ship_?” Chenle bursts out laughing. “Oh, Renjun’s gonna kill you.”

Jisung’s eyes dart over to the hut, and he smiles. “I don’t think he’ll mind.”

—

When Chenle steps off of Jisung’s ship and onto Arbra’s solid ground, he’s immediately greeted by a fuming Renjun. He pulls Chenle into a crushing embrace for a second before pinching his ear and harshly twisting it.

“Chenle Zhong, I swear to _god_ , what the actual hell were you thinking? You could’ve died! Almost did, based on what Jisung told me. Do you know how it feels to have my cousin decide to veer off track and try to land somewhere we all explicitly told him _not_ to? And in the same place as Mark, too!”

Chenle perks up at the mention of Mark. “I’m sorry, Junnie, really. But it was for a good cause.”

“What _possible_ good cause is there for—”

Chenle steps aside, revealing the other passenger on the ship.

Renjun freezes.

Mark laughs nervously, rubbing the nape of his neck. “Hey, Jun. It’s been a while, huh?”

Mark’s ruby ring glints in the artificial light of the cockpit behind him, and that seems to shake Renjun out of his stupor. He takes a few shaky steps forward, and then:

“You’re _alive_ , “ Renjun sobs, throwing his arms around Mark. “I knew you were. Why couldn’t you have just let me look for you?”

Mark presses a kiss to the crown of his head. He runs his hands along Renjun’s spine, gentle and hesitant. As if he can’t comprehend having Renjun in his arms again after so long. “I’m sorry, love. But I’m here now, right?

Jisung tugs at Chenle’s arm, tearing his gaze away from the sight in front of them. “We should give them some privacy.”

Chenle nods, and they shuffle away to the mouth of the forest, a respectful distance away from Renjun and Mark.

“You beat me to it, you know,” Chenle says. “Me and Mark were fixing an eyeball we found. We planned to fly it here.”

Jisung’s eyes widen, and relief flickers across his features. “So you were going to come back no matter what.”

“Of course. You couldn’t keep me away if you tried. Trust me, Renjun’s tried plenty with all the missions he sends me on. I keep coming back. Like a boomerang or something.”

“Or a spider-roach.”

Chenle blinks, thoroughly offended. “Did you just compare me to a bug?”

Jisung grins. “Yeah.”

“Okay, we’re done here.” He shoos Jisung away. “Goodbye.”

Jisung grins and only steps closer, wrapping his arms around Chenle’s midriff and burrowing his face in Chenle’s hair. “I missed you so much,” he mumbles. “I was so worried. We all were. How do you think I felt when the idiot boy I’ve been in love with for years decided to go crash his ship on a fucking _Imperial_ planet?”

“Love?” Chenle echoes, trying to crane his head around to peer at Jisung.

Jisung groans. “Is that really all you took away from this?”

“So love, huh,” Chenle continues smoothly. “Sounds good to me.” He rests his hands on top of Jisung’s and melts into his embrace. Jisung’s grip on his waist tightens.

“Would’ve told you earlier but you decided to hang up on me.”

A fair point, but: “It was for your own good.” And Chenle does mean it; there are some things Jisung shouldn’t be subject to hearing. Such as what it sounds like when steel collides with unforgiving ground.

Jisung hums, considering that. “I guess I can say it more often to make up for it.”

“Not opposed to that decision.” He’s suddenly struck with a thought, and turns around in Jisung’s hold. “So, you know how to fly.”

“I do.” Jisung eyes him warily. “Why?”

“How do you feel about going on a little ride around Arbra? Just me and you and a nice cozy starfighter.”

Jisung stares at him. Chenle probably sounds a bit nuts, considering he _just_ got back from being stranded on a planet because of a starfighter accident, but it’s exactly that; it had been months without a starfighter to pilot. He has no idea how Mark managed for that long, and Chenle certainly doesn’t have the same patience. He misses starfields and planets and TIE Fighters to shoot and stormtroopers to insult. The whole lot.

“Not sure if you got the memo, but your ship is currently in pieces on Corellia,” Jisung says dryly.

Chenle winces. “But you guys have other ships."

“Yes, but _you’re_ on a flying ban for the time being and _I’m_ never touching a starfighter again in my life.”

Chenle pouts, and he can see Jisung already start to crumble.

Perhaps it’s a good thing that Jisung’s so, incredibly smitten for Chenle, because an hour later, Chenle finds himself teaching Jisung the controls of an A-Wing they had found in the hangar as Jisung grips the steering handles so tightly his knuckles go white, the ion engine roaring from behind them as they speed through the sky, right where the atmosphere meets the rest of space.

The adrenaline rush of it all is headying, though maybe now the feeling is partially due to Jisung’s mere presence beside him. Maybe Jisung’s why all Chenle ever tastes on his tongue now is crystal-candy sweetness.

But it isn’t like Chenle’s complaining.

**Author's Note:**

> weee thank you for reading!!! i am going to hibernate for a while this was tough  
> stay safe<3
> 
> marji created the most beautiful drawing for an extra scene i wrote!! i hope you enjoy the little scene!! and i’m really still in awe it’s gorgeous pls shower her with lots of love:]
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/jisunflwer) & [cc](https://curiouscat.me/jisunflwr)


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